CiteULike: flb86's no-tag

Security Analysis: The Classic 1934 Edition

Benjamin Graham — 2007-11-21T16:20:29-00:00

(01 October 1996)

This classic book secured Benjamin Graham's status as a Wall street immortal. the carefully honed methods for finding undervalued stocks and bonds he described here have never been equaled, and have already outlived their author by more than 20 years. Even as Security Analysis has gone through five editions and nearly a million copes, you can learn time-tested investment secrets and strategies by going back to the source - THE ORIGINAL - and paying close attention to its wisdom. Written just five years after the crash, Security Analysis's message today is just as vivid, just as lucid, and just as vital as it was in 1934.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz — 2007-11-20T15:20:29-00:00

(06 September 2007)

This is the long-awaited first novel from one of the most original and memorable writers working today. Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuk-the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim. Daz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Daz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Jeff Chang — 2007-11-13T18:41:27-00:00

(27 December 2005)

Many good books have been written about the history of hip-hop music and the generation that nurtured it. Can't Stop Won't Stop ranks among the best. Jeff Chang covers the music--from its Jamaican roots in the late 1960s to its birth in the Bronx; its eventual explosion from underground to the American mainstream--with style, including DJs, MCs, b-boys, graffiti art, Black Nationalism, groundbreaking singles and albums, and the street parties that gave rise to a genuine movement. But the book is about more than beats and rhymes. What distinguishes his book from the pack is Chang's examination of how hip-hop has shaped not only pop music, but American history and culture over the past 30 years. He shows how events such as urban flight, race riots, neighborhood reclamation projects, gang warfare in the Bronx and Los Angeles, and grassroots movements that influenced political agendas are as integral a part of the hip-hop story as the music itself. He also charts the concurrent rise of hip-hop activism and the commodification of the music and the ideological clashes that developed as a result. Based on hundreds of interviews and over a decade of work as a respected music journalist, Chang offers colorful profiles of the lives and influences of "the trinity of hip-hop music"--Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and DJ Kool Herc--along with many other artists, label executives, DJs, writers, filmmakers, and promoters. Impressive in its scope, Can't Stop Won't Stop is a lively and sharply written exploration of the power of hip-hop to unite people across generational, racial, and economic lines. --Shawn Carkonen Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop has been a generation-defining global movement. In a post-civil rights era rapidly transformed by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop gave voiceless youths a chance to address these seismic changes, and became a job-making engine and the Esperanto of youth rebellion. Hip-hop crystallized a multiracial generations worldview, and forever transformed politics and culture. But the epic story of how that happened has not been told....until now.

Zazie in the Metro (Penguin Classics)

Raymond Queneau — 2007-11-13T18:40:13-00:00

(01 November 2001)

Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with Gabriel, her female-impersonator uncle. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute. In 1960 Queneau's cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle. Packed full of word play and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty as ever.

How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads (Counterpunch)

Daniel Cassidy — 2007-11-09T18:29:45-00:00

(08 October 2007)

In a series of lively essays, this pioneering book proves that US slang has its strongest wellsprings in nineteenth-century Irish America. "Jazz" and "poker," "sucker" and "scam" all derive from Irish. While demonstrating this, Daniel Cassidy simultaneously traces the hidden history of how Ireland fashioned America, not just linguistically, but through the Irish gambling underworld, urban street gangs, and the powerful political machines that grew out of them. Cassidy uncovers a secret national heritage, long discounted by our WASP-dominated culture. Daniel Cassidy is the founder and co-director of the Irish Studies Program at New College in San Francisco.

Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (Vintage)

Alexander Stille — 2006-07-27T03:07:23-00:00

(06 August 1996)

In 1992 Italy was convulsed by two brazen Mafia assassinations of high-ranking officials. The latest "excellent cadavers" were Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the Sicilian magistrates who had been the Cosa Nostra's most implacable enemies. Yet in the aftermath of the murders, hundreds of "men of honor" were arrested and the government that ad protected them for nearly half a century was at last driven from office. This is the story that Stille tells with such insight and immediacy in Excellent Cadavers. Combining a profound understanding of his doomed heroes with and unprecedented look into the Mafia's stringent codes and murderous rivalries, he gives us a book that has the power of a great work of history and the suspense of a true thriller. "Riveting...a well-paced and highly informative account stocked with well-drawn characters."--Philadelphia Inquirer "Masterful...[Stille] delivers a stiletto-sharp portrait of the bloodthirsty Sicilian mafia."--Business Week

Gomorrah

Roberto Saviano — 2007-11-06T15:01:09-00:00

(30 October 2007)

<div><div>A groundbreaking major bestseller in Italy, Gomorrah is Roberto Saviano’s gripping nonfiction account of the decline of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network with a large international reach and stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal. Known by insiders as “the System,” the Camorra affects cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast, and is the deciding factor in why Campania, for instance, has the highest murder rate in all of Europe and whycancer levels there have skyrocketed in recent years. Saviano tells of huge cargoes of Chinese goods that are shipped to Naples and then quickly distributed unchecked across Europe. He investigates the Camorra’s control of thousands of Chinese factories contracted to manufacture fashion goods, legally and illegally, for distribution around the world, and relates the chilling details of how the abusive handling of toxic waste is causing devastating pollution not only for Naples but also China and Somalia. In pursuit of his subject, Saviano worked as an assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer, a waiter at a Camorra wedding, and on a construction site. A native of the region, he recalls seeing his first murder at the age of fourteen, and how his own father, a doctor, suffered a brutal beating for trying to aid an eighteen-year-old victim who had been left for dead in the street. Gomorrah is a bold and important work of investigative writing that holds global significance, one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization.</div></div>

Cion: A Novel

Zakes Mda — 2007-11-06T14:54:03-00:00

(21 August 2007)

<div> A Picador Paperback Original The hero of Zakes Mda's beloved Ways of Dying, Toloki, sets down with a family in Middle America and uncovers the story of the runaway slaves who were their ancestors. Toloki, the professional mourner, has come to live in America. Lured to Athens, Ohio, by an academic at the local university, Toloki makes friends with an angry young man he meets at a Halloween parade and soon falls in love with the young man's sister. Toloki endears himself to a local quilting group and his quilting provides a portal to the past, a story of two escaped slaves seeking freedom in Ohio. Making their way north from Virginia with nothing but their mother's quilts for a map, the boys hope to find a promised land where blacks can live as free men. Their story alternates with Toloki's, as the two narratives cast a new light on America in the twenty-first century and on an undiscovered legacy of the Underground Railroad.</div>

Ways of Dying: A Novel

Zakes Mda — 2007-11-06T14:53:16-00:00

(01 August 2002)

<div>Winner of the M-Net Book Prize Shortlisted for the CNA and Noma Awards In Ways of Dying, Zakes Mda's acclaimed first novel, Toloki is a "professional mourner" in a vast and violent city of the new South Africa. Day after day he attends funerals in the townships, dressed with dignity in a threadbare suit, cape, and battered top hat, to comfort the grieving families of the victims of the city's crime, racial hatred, and crippling poverty. At a Christmas day funeral for a young boy Toloki is reunited with Noria, a woman from his village. Together they help each other to heal the past, and as their story interweaves with those of their acquaintances this elegant short novel provides a magical and painful picture of South Africa today. Ways of Dying was awarded South Africa's prestigious M-Net Book Prize, awarded by the TV channel M-Net to books written in one of South Africa's official languages, and was shortlisted for the Central News Agency (CNA) Award and the Noma Award, an Africa-wide prize founded by Shoichi Noma, onetime president of Kodansha International. </div>

Disaster as a Place of Morality: The Sovereign, the Humanitarian, and the Terrorist

Adi Ophir — 2007-11-04T20:50:51-00:00

qui parle, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Summer 2006), pp. 95-116.

Jesus' Son : Stories by

Denis Johnson — 2005-11-22T05:17:08-00:00

(15 December 1993)

The unnamed narrator in Jesus' Son lives through a car wreck and a heroin overdose. Is he blessed? He cheats, lies, steals--but possesses a child's (or a mystic's) uncanny way of expressing the bare essence of things around him. In its own strange and luminous way, this linked collection of short fiction does the same. The stories follow characters who are seemingly marginalized beyond hope, drifting through a narcotic haze of ennui, failed relationships, and petty crime. In "Dundun" the narrator decides to take a shooting victim to the hospital, though not for the usual reasons: "I wanted to be the one who saw it through and got McInnes to the doctor without a wreck. People would talk about it, and I hoped I would be liked." Later he takes his own pathetic stab at violence in "The Other Man," attempting to avenge a drug rip-off but succeeding only at terrorizing an innocent family. Each meandering story--some utterly lacking in the usual elements of plot, including a beginning and an end--nonetheless demands compulsive reading, with Denis Johnson's first calling as a poet apparent in the off-kilter beauty of his prose. Open to any page and gems spill forth: "I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside that we'd have an accident in the storm." The most successful stories in the collection offer moments of startling clarity. In "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," for instance, the narrator feels most alive while in the presence of another's loss: "Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead.... What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere." In "Work," while "salvaging" copper wire from a flooded house to fund their habits, the narrator and an acquaintance stop to watch the nearly unfathomable sight of a beautiful, naked woman paragliding up the river. Later the narrator learns that the house once belonged to his down-and-out accomplice and that the woman is his estranged wife. "As nearly as I could tell, I'd wandered into some sort of dream that Wayne was having about his wife, and his house," he reasons. Such is the experience for the reader. More Genet than Bukowski, Denis Johnson lures us into a misfit soul's dream from which he can't awake. --Langdon Cook An intense collection of interconnected stories that portray life through the eyes of a young man in a small Iowa town, by the author of Already Dead: A California Gothic, Angels and Resuscitation of a Hanged Man.

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power

Rob Gifford — 2007-10-31T17:01:50-00:00

(29 May 2007)

Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down. In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong? Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country’s frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China’s rise. The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way. As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people. “Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford’s acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China’s explosive development open readers’ eyes and reward their minds.” –Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004

Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project)

Chalmers Johnson — 2007-10-30T17:11:16-00:00

(22 January 2008)

<div><div>A New York Times bestseller, Nemesis is Chalmers Johnson’s “fiercest book—and his best” (Andrew J. Bacevich)</div><div> </div><div><div>In his prophetic book Blowback, Chalmers Johnson linked the CIA’s clandestine activities abroad to disaster at home. In The Sorrows of Empire, he explored the ways in which the growth of American militarism and the garrisoning of the planet have jeopardized our stability. In Nemesis, the bestselling and final volume in what has become known as the Blowback Trilogy, he shows how imperial overstretch is undermining the republic itself, both economically and politically. Delving into new areas—from plans to militarize outer space to Constitution-breaking presidential activities at home and the devastating corruption of a toothless Congress—Nemesis offers a striking description of the trap into which the reckless ambitions of America’s leaders have taken us. Johnson confronts questions of pressing urgency: What are the unintended consequences of our dependence on a permanent war economy? What does it mean when a nation’s main intelligence organization becomes the president’s secret army? Or when the globe’s sole “hyperpower” becomes the greatest hyper-debtor of all times? Writing “as if the very existence of the nation is at stake” (San Francisco Chronicle), Johnson offers his most “bracing” and “important” (Los Angeles Times) exploration of the crisis facing America.</div></div></div>

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)

Chalmers Johnson — 2007-10-30T17:10:44-00:00

(06 January 2005)

Since September 2001, the United States has "undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible," writes Chalmers Johnson. Unlike past global powers, however, America has built an empire of bases rather than colonies, creating in the process a government that is obsessed with maintaining absolute military dominance over the world, Johnson claims. The Department of Defense currently lists 725 official U.S. military bases outside of the country and 969 within the 50 states (not to mention numerous secret bases). According to the author, these bases are proof that the "United States prefers to deal with other nations through the use or threat of force rather than negotiations, commerce, or cultural interaction." This rise of American militarism, along with the corresponding layers of bureaucracy and secrecy that are created to circumvent scrutiny, signals a shift in power from the populace to the Pentagon: "A revolution would be required to bring the Pentagon back under democratic control," he writes. In Sorrows of Empire, Johnson discusses the roots of American militarism, the rise and extent of the military-industrial complex, and the close ties between arms industry executives and high-level politicians. He also looks closely at how the military has extended the boundaries of what constitutes national security in order to centralize intelligence agencies under their control and how statesmen have been replaced by career soldiers on the front lines of foreign policy--a shift that naturally increases the frequency with which we go to war. Though his conclusions are sure to be controversial, Johnson is a skilled and experienced historian who backs up his claims with copious research and persuasive arguments. His important book adds much to a debate about the realities and direction of U.S. influence in the world. --Shawn Carkonen "Impressive . . . a powerful indictment of U.S. military and foreign policy." Los Angeles Times Book Review, front page In the years after the Soviet Union imploded, the United States was described first as the globe's "lone superpower," then as a "reluctant sheriff," next as the "indispensable nation," and in the wake of 9/11, as a "New Rome." In this important national bestseller, Chalmers Johnson thoroughly explores the new militarism that is transforming America and compelling us to pick up the burden of empire.Recalling the classic warnings against militarism-from George Washington's Farewell Address to Dwight Eisenhower's denunciation of the military-industrial complex-Johnson uncovers its roots deep in our past. Turning to the present, he maps America's expanding empire of military bases and the vast web of services that support them. He offers a vivid look at the new caste of professional militarists who have infiltrated multiple branches of government, who classify as "secret" everything they do, and for whom the manipulation of the military budget is of vital interest. Among Johnson's provocative conclusions is that American militarism is already putting an end to the age of globalization and bankrupting the United States, even as it creates the conditions for a new century of virulent blowback. The Sorrows of Empire suggests that the former American republic has already crossed its Rubicon-with the Pentagon in the lead.

Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

Chalmers Johnson — 2007-10-30T17:10:23-00:00

(04 January 2004)

If the 20th century was the American century, the 21st century may be a time of reckoning for the United States. Chalmers Johnson, an authority on Japan and its economy, offers a troubling prognosis of what's to come. Blowback--the title refers to a CIA neologism describing the unintended consequences of American activity--is a call for the United States to rethink its position in the world. "The evidence is building up that in the decade following the end of the Cold War, the United States largely abandoned a reliance on diplomacy, economic aid, international law, and multilateral institutions in carrying out its foreign policies and resorted much of the time to bluster, military force, and financial manipulation," writes Johnson. "The world is not a safer place as a result." Individual chapters focus on Okinawa (where American servicemen were accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in "Asia's last colony"), the two Koreas, China, and Japan. The result is a liberal-leaning (and Asia-centric) call for the United States to disengage from many of its global commitments. Critics will call Johnson an isolationist, but friends (perhaps admirers of Patrick Buchanan's A Republic, Not an Empire) will say he simply speaks good sense. All will agree he is an earnest voice: "I believe our very hubris ensures our undoing." --John J. Miller The term 'blowback,' invented by the CIA, refers to the unintended results of American actions abroad. In this incisive and controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From a case of rape by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa to our role in Asia's financial crisis, from our early support for Saddam Hussein to our conduct in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the ways in which our misguided policies are planting the seeds of future disaster. In a new edition that addresses recent international events from September 11 to the war in Iraq, this now classic book remains as prescient and powerful as ever.

Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx (Penguin Classics)

Karl Marx — 2007-10-30T17:09:20-00:00

(26 February 2008)

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

James Watson — 2007-10-25T17:38:13-00:00

(12 June 2001)

By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only twenty-four, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries. With humility unspoiled by false modesty, Watson relates his and Crick's desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the Holy Grail of life sciences, the identification of the basic building block of life. Never has a scientist been so truthful in capturing in words the flavor of his work.

Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Public Worlds, V. 1)

Arjun Appadurai — 2005-05-11T20:23:16-00:00

(01 November 1996)

Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants

Jorge Castaneda — 2007-10-22T16:12:19-00:00

(01 January 2008)

A fascinating and revealing look at the United States' largest, most controversial group of immigrants, by Mexico's former foreign minister. In the wake of the massive, nationwide rally in support of immigrant rights in May 2006, which drew a record number of participants, one thing has become clear: in the United States today, no domestic issue sparks as much public debate or is as politicized as immigration, with the spotlight focused on Mexican immigrants above all others. In Ex Mex, former Mexican foreign minister and well-known scholar Jorge G. Castañeda draws on his experience in both capacities to dispel some of the most widely held and mistaken ideas about the United States' largest immigrant population. Through Castañeda, we learn who the newest generation of immigrants from Mexico is, why they've chosen to live in the United States, where they work, and what they ultimately hope to achieve. Castañeda also offers an insider's account of the intricate and secret negotiations that took place between Mexico and the United States in 2001-2—contradicting some of the official versions published here—and the unilateral actions that were taken by his government to improve the conditions of Mexican migrants when talks between the two countries became stalemated. This timely and authoritative book will be required reading for the debates about immigration that will soon be part of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Constructal Theory of Social Dynamics

Gilbert Merkx — 2007-10-19T11:47:19-00:00

(14 August 2007)

Constructal Theory of Social Dynamics brings together for the first time social scientists and engineers to develop a predictive theory of social organization, as a conglomerate of mating flows that morph in time to flow more easily (people, goods, money, energy, information). These flows have objectives (e.g., minimization of effort, travel time, cost), and the objectives clash with global constraints (space, time, resources). The result is organization (flow architecture) derived from one principle of configuration evolution in time (the constructal law): "for a flow system to persist in time, its configuration must morph such that it provides easier access to its streams." Constructal theory predicts animal design and geophysical flows, and makes evolution a part of physics. In the social sciences, there is substantial literature based on the use of optima to deduce social, population and economic dynamics. The constructal approach of this book links social sciences with physics, biology and engineering. The book explores the deterministic principle that generates a broad array of patterned phenomena, in demography, geography, communications, hierarchy, and multiple scales. Examples are the distribution of living settlements, the occurrence of flow structure inside each settlement, development as the relation between fast-flowing societies and advancement and wealth, migration patterns, and globalization. Constructal Theory of Social Dynamics is novel and important because it puts the occurrence of social organization on a scientific basis. It brings social organization under the same physics principle that accounts for the generation of flow architecture (design) in geophysical flows, animal design, and engineered flows. This exploratory work adds a dose of determinism to the modeling and predicting of societal flows.

Shape And Structure, From Engineering To Nature

Adrian Bejan — 2007-10-19T11:46:19-00:00

(15 January 2000)

Seemingly universal geometric forms unite the flow systems of engineering and nature. In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan considers the design and optimization of engineered systems and discovers a relationship to the generation of geometric form in natural systems. The idea that shape and structure spring from the struggle for better performance in both engineering and nature is the basis of his new constructal theory: the objective and constraints principle in engineering is the same mechanism underlying the geometry in natural flow systems. From heat exchangers to river channels, Bejan draws many parallels between the engineered and natural worlds. Numerous illustrations, examples, and homework problems make this an ideal text for engineering design courses. Its provocative ideas will also appeal to a broad range of readers in engineering, natural sciences, economics, and business.

Solea (Marseilles Trilogy)

Jean-Claude Izzo — 2007-10-15T05:42:18-00:00

"Izzo digs deep into what makes men weep."-Time Out New York The third and final installment in the remarkable Marseilles Trilogy (including Total Chaos and Chourmo), Solea continues Jean-Claude Izzo's distinctive brand of vibrant crime writing, skillfully evoking a time and place that have captured the hearts and imaginations of readers the world over. Marseilles' simmering issues of race, politics, organized crime, and big business come to a rolling boil. Ex-cop, loner, and would-be bon vivant, Fabio Montale is back. His heartfelt cry against the criminal forces devastating his beloved Marseilles provides the touching conclusion to a trilogy that epitomizes the aspirations and ideals of the Mediterranean noir movement.

Chourmo

Jean-Claude Izzo — 2007-10-15T05:42:02-00:00

(30 September 2007)

 "A talented French writer who draws from the deep dark well of noir."-The Washington Post Chourmo . . . the rowers in a galley. In Marseilles, you weren't just from one neighborhood, one project. You were chourmo. In the same galley, rowing! Trying to get out. Together. In this second installment of Jean-Claude Izzo's legendary Marseilles Trilogy-which includes Total Chaos,Chourmo, and Solea-Fabio Montale has left a police force riddled with corruption, racism, and greed to follow the ancient rhythms of his native town: the sea, fishing, the local bar, hotly contested games of belote. But his cousin's son has gone missing, and Montale is dragged back onto the mean streets of a violent, crime-infested Marseilles.

Total Chaos (Marseilles Trilogy)

Jean-Claude Izzo — 2007-10-15T05:41:38-00:00

(01 November 2005)

"Jean-Claude Izzo's . . . growing literary renown and huge sales are leading to a recognizable new trend in continental fiction: the rise of the sophisticated Mediterranean thriller. . . . Caught between pride and crime, racism and fraternity, tragedy and light, messy urbanization and generous beauty, the city for [detective Fabio Montale] is a Utopia, an ultimate port of call for exiles. There, he is torn between fatalism and revolt, despair and sensualism."-The Economist This first installment in the legendary Marseilles Trilogy sees Fabio Montale turning his back on a police force marred by corruption and racism and taking the fight against the mafia into his own hands. Jean-Claude Izzo achieved astoundingly rapid success with his Marseilles Trilogy. He died in Marseilles in 2000 at the age of 55.

Mariette In Ecstasy

Ron Hansen — 2007-10-14T15:52:41-00:00

Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)

George Eliot — 2006-05-20T19:30:58-00:00

(25 March 2003)

It was George Eliot's ambition to create a world and portray a whole community--tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry--in the rising fictional provincial town of Middlemarch, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in narrative irony and suspense, Middlemarch is richer still in character and in its sense of how individual destinies are shaped by and shape the community. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Rosemary Ashton On April 10, 1994, PBS stations nationwide will air the first episode of a lavish six-part Masterpiece Theatre production of Eliot's brilliant work, Middlemarch, hosted by Russell Baker and produced by Louis Marks. The Modern Library is pleased to offer this official companion edition, complete with tie-in art and printed on acid-free paper. Unabridged.

The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri — 2007-10-14T15:42:21-00:00

(13 August 2004)

We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel (P.S.)

Lionel Shriver — 2007-10-14T15:40:36-00:00

(01 July 2006)

 The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry Eva never really wanted to be a mother&#8212and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

Light Years

James Salter — 2007-10-14T15:39:03-00:00

(31 January 1995)

This exquisite, resonant novel is a brilliant portrait of marriage by a contemporary American master. Even as he lingers over the lustrous surface of Viri and Nedra's marriage, James Salter makes us see the cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will in time mar it beyond repair. "An unexpectedly moving ode to beautiful lives frayed by time." This is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose charmed life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, James Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it. This exquisite, resonant novel is a portrait of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness--and then felt compelled to destroy it.

A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial

HL Mencken — 2007-10-07T01:52:05-00:00

(01 September 2006)

 "The native American Voltaire, the enemy of all puritans, the heretic in the Sunday school, the one-man demolition crew of the genteel tradition."-Alistair Cooke Fiercely intelligent, scathingly honest, and hysterically funny, H.L. Mencken's coverage of the Scopes Monkey Trial so galvanized the nation that it eventually inspired a Broadway play and hit movie. Mencken's no-nonsense sensibility is still exciting: his perceptive rendering of the courtroom drama; his piercing portrayals of key figures Scopes, Clarence Darrow, and William Jennings Bryan; his ferocious take on the fundamentalist culture surrounding it all-including a raucous midnight trip into the woods to witness a secret "holy roller" service. Shockingly, these reports have never been gathered together into a book of their own-until now. A Religious Orgy in Tennessee includes all of Mencken's reports for The Baltimore Sun, The Nation, and The American Mercury. It even includes his coverage of Bryan's death just days after the trial-an obituary so withering Mencken was forced to rewrite it (both versions are included, although the rewrite seems, if anything, even less forgiving). With the rise of "intelligent design," Mencken's work has never seemed more unnervingly timely-or timeless.

The Origin of Species

Charles Darwin — 2007-04-05T01:42:37-00:00

(22 May 1995)

It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable. To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here. Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. It is the major book of the nineteenth century, and one of the most readable and accessible of the great revolutionary works of the scientific imagination. The Origin of Species was the first mature and persuasive work to explain how species change through the process of natural selection. Upon its publication, the book began to transform attitudes about society and religion, and was soon used to justify the philosophies of communists, socialists, capitalists, and even Germany's National Socialists. But the most quoted response came from Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's friend and also a renowned naturalist, who exclaimed, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" In the Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by 'natural selection'. Development, diversification, decay, extinction and absence of plan are all inherent to his theories. Darwin read prodigiously across many fields; he reflected on his experiences as a traveller, he experimented. His profoundly influential concept of 'natural selection' condenses materials from past and present, from the Galapagos Islands to rural Staffordshire, from English back gardens to colonial encounters. The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever.

The Soccer War

Ryszard Kapuscinski — 2007-10-06T14:49:19-00:00

(19 March 1998)

Shah of Shahs

Ryszard Kapuscinski — 2007-10-06T14:48:16-00:00

(01 June 2006)

Another Day of Life (Penguin Modern Classics)

Ryszard Kapuscinski — 2007-10-06T14:47:54-00:00

(07 June 2001)

In 1975, Angola was tumbling into pandemonium; everyone who could was packing crates, desperate to abandon the beleaguered colony. With his trademark bravura, Ryszard Kapuscinski went the other way, begging his was from Lisbon and comfort to Luanda—once famed as Africa's Rio de Janeiro—and chaos. Angola, a slave colony later given over to mining and plantations, was a promised land for generations of poor Portuguese. It had belonged to Portugal since before there were English-speakers in North America. After the collapse of the fascist dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, Angola was brusquely cut loose, spurring the catastrophe of a still-ongoing civil war. Kapuscinski plunged right into the middle of the drama, driving past thousands of haphazardly placed check-points, where using the wrong shibboleth was a matter of life and death; recording his imporessions of the young soldiers—from Cuba, Angola, South Africa, Portugal—fighting a nebulous war with global repercussions; and examining the peculiar brutality of a country surprised and divided by its newfound freedom. Translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand.

Emperor

Ryszard Kapuscinski — 2007-10-06T14:47:31-00:00

(01 June 2006)

Haile Selassie, His Most Puissant Majesty and Distinguished Highness the Emperor of Ethiopia, enjoyed a 44-year reign until his own army gave him the boot in 1974. In the days following the coup, the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski traveled to Ethiopia and sought out members of the imperial court for interviews. His composite portrait of Selassie's crumbling imperium is an astonishing, wildly funny creation, beginning with the very first interview. "It was a small dog," recalls an anonymous functionary, "a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor's great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor's lap and pee on dignitaries' shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or make the slightest gesture when they felt their feet getting wet. I had to walk among the dignitaries and wipe the urine from their shoes with a satin cloth. This was my job for ten years." (Well, it's a living.) Elsewhere, the interviewees venture into tragic or grotesque or downright unbelievable terrain. Kapuscinski has shaped their testimonies into an eloquent whole, and while he never alludes to the totalitarian regime that ruled his native Poland during the same period, the analogy is impossible to ignore.

The Shadow of the Sun

Ryszard Kapuscinski — 2007-10-06T14:46:47-00:00

(09 April 2002)

When Africa makes international news, it is usually because war has broken out or some bizarre natural disaster has taken a large number of lives. Westerners are appallingly ignorant of Africa otherwise, a condition that the great Polish journalist and writer Ryszard Kapuœciñski helps remedy with this book based on observations gathered over more than four decades. Kapuœciñski first went to Africa in 1957, a time pregnant with possibilities as one country after another declared independence from the European colonial powers. Those powers, he writes, had "crammed the approximately ten thousand kingdoms, federations, and stateless but independent tribal associations that existed on this continent in the middle of the nineteenth century within the borders of barely forty colonies." When independence came, old interethnic rivalries, long suppressed, bubbled up to the surface, and the continent was consumed in little wars of obscure origin, from caste-based massacres in Rwanda and ideological conflicts in Ethiopia to hit-and-run skirmishes among Tuaregs and Bantus on the edge of the Sahara. With independence, too, came the warlords, whose power across the continent derives from the control of food, water, and other life-and-death resources, and whose struggles among one another fuel the continent's seemingly endless civil wars. When the warlords "decide that everything worthy of plunder has been extracted," Kapuœciñski writes, wearily, they call a peace conference and are rewarded with credits and loans from the First World, which makes them richer and more powerful than ever, "because you can get significantly more from the World Bank than from your own starving kinsmen." Constantly surprising and eye-opening, Kapuœciñski's book teaches us much about contemporary events and recent history in Africa. It is also further evidence for why he is considered to be one of the best journalists at work today. --Gregory McNamee In 1957, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa to witness the beginning of the end of colonial rule as the first African correspondent of Poland's state newspaper. From the early days of independence in Ghana to the ongoing ethnic genocide in Rwanda, Kapuscinski has crisscrossed vast distances pursuing the swift, and often violent, events that followed liberation. Kapuscinski hitchhikes with caravans, wanders the Sahara with nomads, and lives in the poverty-stricken slums of Nigeria. He wrestles a king cobra to the death and suffers through a bout of malaria. What emerges is an extraordinary depiction of Africa--not as a group of nations or geographic locations--but as a vibrant and frequently joyous montage of peoples, cultures, and encounters. Kapuscinski's trenchant observations, wry analysis and overwhelming humanity paint a remarkable portrait of the continent and its people. His unorthodox approach and profound respect for the people he meets challenge conventional understandings of the modern problems faced by Africa at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa in 1957, at the beginning of the end of colonial rule -- the "sometimes dramatic and painful, sometimes enjoyable and jubilant" rebirth of a continent. The Shadow of the Sun sums up the author's experiences ("the record of a 40-year marriage") in this place that became the central obsession of his remarkable career. From the hopeful years of independence through the bloodcurdling disintegration of nations such as Nigeria, Rwanda, and Angola, Kapuscinski recounts great social and political changes through the prism of the ordinary African. He looks at the rough-and-ready physical world and identifies the true geography of Africa: a little-understood spiritual universe, an African way of being. And he offers a moving portrait of Africa in the wake of two epoch-making changes: the arrival of AIDS and the definitive departure of the white man. Kapuscinski's rare humanity invests his subject with a dignity and grandeur unmatched by any other writer on the Third World, and his unique ability to discern the universal in the particular has never been more powerfully displayed than in this work. The Shadow of the Sun is a masterpiece from a modern master.

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

Rashid Khalidi — 2006-11-19T04:35:59-00:00

(04 October 2006)

In Resurrecting Empire, Rashid Khalidi dissected the failures of colonial policy over the entire span of the modern history of the Middle East, predicted the meltdown in Iraq that we are now witnessing with increasing horror, and offered viable alternatives for achieving peace in the region. His newest book, The Iron Cage, hones in on Palestinian politics and history. Once again Khalidi draws on a wealth of experience and scholarship to elucidate the current conflict, using history to provide a clear-eyed view of the situation today. The story of the Palestinian search to establish a state begins in the era of British control over Palestine and stretches between the two world wars, when colonial control of the region became increasingly unpopular and power began to shift toward the United States. In this crucial period, and in the years immediately following World War II, Palestinian leaders were unable to achieve the long-cherished goal of establishing an independent state-a critical failure that throws a bright light on the efforts of the Palestinians to create a state in the many decades since 1948. By frankly discussing the reasons behind this failure, Khalidi offers a much-needed perspective for anyone concerned about peace in the Middle East.

The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Social & Cultural Anthropology)

Arjun Appadurai — 2005-05-15T18:34:28-00:00

(29 January 1988)

Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana

Peter Redfield — 2007-09-24T20:46:58-00:00

(02 October 2000)

Rockets roar into space--bearing roughly half the world's commercial satellites--from the same South American coastal rainforest where convicts once did time on infamous Devil's Island. What makes Space in the Tropics enthralling is anthropologist Peter Redfield's ability to draw from these two disparate European projects in French Guiana a gleaming web of ideas about the intersections of nature and culture. In comparing the Franco-European Ariane rocket program with the earlier penal experiment, Redfield connects the myth of Robinson Crusoe, nineteenth-century prison reform, the Dreyfus Affair, tropical medicine, postwar exploration of outer space, satellite technology, development, and ecotourism with a focus on place, and the incorporation of this particular place into greater extended systems. Examining the wider context of the Ariane program, he argues that technology and nature must be understood within a greater ecology of displacement and makes a case for the importance of margins in understanding the trajectories of modern life.

A less modest witness

Peter Redfield — 2006-04-24T03:32:14-00:00

American Ethnologist, Vol. 33, No. 1. (2006), pp. 3-26.

In this article, I examine the evolving tradition of témoignage (witnessing) maintained by the international humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières—Doctors Without Borders. Comparing this practice to traditions of virtuous testimony by the public intellectual and the gentleman scientist, I suggest that collective actors like nongovernmental organizations now play a central role in defining secular moral truth for an international audience. By integrating medical expertise and public expression, the work of this group illustrates an overtly motivated form of scientific research, finding facts in the name of values, in the pursuit of both technical and ethical ends.

Material World: A Global Family Portrait

Peter Menzel — 2007-09-22T17:51:47-00:00

(03 October 1995)

In honor of the United Nations-sponsored International Year of the Family in 1994, award-winning photojournalist Peter Menzel brought together 16 of the world's leading photographers to create a visual portrait of life in 30 nations. Material World tackles its wide subject by zooming in, allowing one household to represent an entire nation. Photographers spent one week living with a "statistically average" family in each country, learning about their work, their attitudes toward their possessions, and their hopes for the future. Then a "big picture" shot of the family was taken outside the dwelling, surrounded by all their (many or few) material goods. The book provides sidebars offering statistics and a brief history for each country, as well as personal notes from the photographers about their experiences. But it is the "big pictures" that tell most of the story. In one, a British family pauses before a meal of tea and crumpets under a cloudy sky. In another, wary Bosnians sit beside mattresses used as sniper barricades. A Malian family composed of a husband, his two wives, and their children rests before a few cooking and washing implements in golden afternoon light. Material World is a lesson in economics and geography, reminding us of the world's inequities, but also of humanity's common threads. An engrossing, enlightening book. --Maria Dolan We are witnessing the emergence of a unified world economy, as exemplified by NAFTA and GATT, that will, in theory, make goods available at cheaper prices, create new jobs throughout the world, raise standards of living, and benefit the average family. However, population growth and resource exploitation will also affect these potential benefits as patterns of consumption change. In stunning photographs and text, Material World demonstrates the present context for the emerging global economy, what it means to be "statistically average," by displaying families in more than thirty nations outside their homes - with all their possessions in view. Among the 350 stunning images are those of a family in lush Samoa juxtaposed with a Kuwaiti family and the two Mercedes-Benzes parked outside their desert home; a family in Iceland posing with their treasured string instruments while a family in Sarajevo huddles outside their bullet-ridden apartment. The text describes what it means to be "average" in each of thirty very dissimilar cultures and the impact of each way of life on the local environment. Statistical information about each country accompanies the photo-essays so that readers can easily compare one culture with another. Material World is a fascinating portrait of multicultural diversity and a preview of emerging issues raised by the impact of the global economy on the cultural heritage of the human community.

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

Peter Menzel — 2007-09-22T17:50:21-00:00

(31 October 2007)

It's an inspired idea--to better understand the human diet, explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week. That's what photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D'Alusio, authors of the equally ambitious Material World, do in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries for 600 meals in all. Their personal-is-political portraits feature pictures of each family with a week's worth of food purchases; weekly food-intake lists with costs noted; typical family recipes; and illuminating essays, such as "Diabesity," on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes. Among the families, we meet the Mellanders, a German household of five who enjoy cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and beef roulades, and whose weekly food expenses amount to $500. We also encounter the Natomos of Mali, a family of one husband, his two wives, and their nine children, whose corn and millet-based diet costs $26.39 weekly. We soon learn that diet is determined by largely uncontrollable forces like poverty, conflict and globalization, which can bring change with startling speed. Thus cultures can move--sometimes in a single jump--from traditional diets to the vexed plenty of global-food production. People have more to eat and, too often, eat more of nutritionally questionable food. Their health suffers. Because the book makes many of its points through the eye, we see--and feel--more than we might otherwise. Issues that influence how the families are nourished (or not) are made more immediate. Quietly, the book reveals the intersection of nutrition and politics, of the particular and universal. It's a wonderful and worthy feat. --Arthur Boehm The age-old practice of sitting down to a family meal is undergoing unprecedented change as rising world affluence and trade, along with the spread of global food conglomerates, transform eating habits worldwide. HUNGRY PLANET profiles 30 families from around the world--including Bosnia, Chad, Egypt, Greenland, Japan, the United States, and France--and offers detailed descriptions of weekly food purchases; photographs of the families at home, at market, and in their communities; and a portrait of each family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries. Featuring photo-essays on international street food, meat markets, fast food, and cookery, this captivating chronicle offers a riveting look at what the world really eats.

Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World

Benjamin Barber — 2005-07-22T18:59:29-00:00

(30 July 1996)

As soon as you hear the conceit of this book--that there are two great opposing forces at work in the world today, border-crossing capitalism and splintering factionalism, and that they are the two biggest threats to democracy--you know it rings true enough to be worth reading. Although capitalism could have only grown to current levels in the soil of democracies, Benjamin Barber argues that global capitalism now tends to work against the very concept of citizenship, of people thinking for themselves and with their neighbors. Too often now, how we think is the product of a transnational corporation (increasingly, a media corporation) with headquarters elsewhere. And although self-determination is one of the most fundamental of democratic principles, unchecked it has lead to a tribalism (think Bosnia, think Rwanda) in which virtually no one besides the local power elite gets a fair shake. The antidote, Barber concludes, is to work everywhere to resuscitate the non-governmental, non-business spaces in life--he calls them "civic spaces" (such as the village green, voluntary associations of every sort, churches, community schools)--where true citizenship thrives. "An important new book." --Newsweek "Mr. Barber is. . . the first to put Jihad and McWorld together in an inescapable dialectic . . . . [It] stands as a bold invitation to debate the broad contours and future of society." --Barbara Ehrenreich The New York Times Book Review "COMPELLING. . . IMPRESSIVE. . . A thorough, engaging look at the current state of world affairs." --The American Reporter Jihad vs. McWorld is a groundbreaking work, an elegant and illuminating analysis of the central conflict of our times: consumerist capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism. These diametrically opposed but strangely intertwined forces are tearing apart--and bringing together--the world as we know it, undermining democracy and the nation-state on which it depends. On the one hand, consumer capitalism on the global level is rapidly dissolving the social and economic barriers between nations, transforming the world's diverse populations into a blandly uniform market. On the other hand, ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds are fragmenting the political landscape into smaller and smaller tribal units. Jihad vs. McWorld is the term that distinguished writer and political scientist Benjamin R. Barber has coined to describe the powerful and paradoxical interdependence of these forces. In this important new book, he explores the alarming repercussions of this potent dialectic for democracy. A work of persuasive originality and penetrating insight, Jihad vs. McWorld holds up a sharp, clear lens to the dangerous chaos of the post-Cold War world. Critics and political leaders have already heralded Benjamin R. Barber's work for its bold vision and moral courage. Jihad vs. McWorld is an essential text for anyone who wants to understand our troubled present and the crisis threatening our future. "CHALLENGING AND INSTRUCTIVE." --San Francisco Chronicle "BARBER IS WELL WORTH READING. . . FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO THE REAL WORLD, LOOK AT JIHAD vs. McWORLD." --The Nation "STIMULATING, TARTLY WRITTEN." --Publishers Weekly

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein — 2007-09-21T20:30:19-00:00

(18 September 2007)

The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global free market has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq In her groundbreaking reporting over the past few years, Naomi Klein introduced the term disaster capitalism. Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic shock treatment, losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman s free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement s peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda

Yaroslav Trofimov — 2007-09-21T16:46:58-00:00

(18 September 2007)

On November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week. The same morning—the first of a new Muslim century—hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam’s holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times. Led by a Saudi preacher named Juhayman al Uteybi, they believed that the Saudi royal family had become a craven servant of American infidels, and sought a return to the glory of uncompromising Islam. With nearly 100,000 worshippers trapped inside the holy compound, Mecca’s bloody siege lasted two weeks, inflaming Muslim rage against the United States and causing hundreds of deaths. Despite U.S. assistance, the Saudi royal family proved haplessly incapable of dislodging the occupier, whose ranks included American converts to Islam. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini blamed the Great Satan—the United States —for defiling the shrine, prompting mobs to storm and torch American embassies in Pakistan and Libya. The desperate Saudis finally enlisted the help of French commandos led by tough-as-nails Captain Paul Barril, who prepared the final assault and supplied poison gas that knocked out the insurgents. Though most captured gunmen were quickly beheaded, the Saudi royal family responded to this unprecedented challenge by compromising with the rebels’ supporters among the kingdom’s most senior clerics, helping them nurture and export Juhayman’s violent brand of Islam around the world. This dramatic and immensely consequential story was barely covered in the press in the pre-CNN, pre–Al Jazeera days, as Saudi Arabia imposed an information blackout and kept foreign correspondents away. Yaroslav Trofimov now penetrates this veil of silence, interviewing for the first time scores of direct participants in the siege, including former terrorists, and drawing on hundreds of documents that had been declassified on his request. Written with the pacing, detail, and suspense of a real-life thriller, The Siege of Mecca reveals how Saudi reaction to the uprising in Mecca set free the forces that produced the attacks of 9/11, and the harrowing circumstances that surround us today.

The Rise of the Network Society

Manuel Castells — 2005-02-28T15:51:21-00:00

(15 January 2000)

<The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume 1> Contents include the information technology revolution, the new economy, the network enterprise, the transformation of work and employment, the culture of real virtuality, the space of flows, and more. Reprint. Previous edition: c1999. Softcover. DLC: Information technology--Economic aspects.

The Israel Lobby

John Mearsheimer — 2007-08-17T01:16:27-00:00

The London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 6. (23 March 2006)

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

John Mearsheimer — 2007-08-17T01:13:25-00:00

(March 2006)

The centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. Though often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the "Israel Lobby." This paper describes the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

Historical Simulations - Motivational, Ethical and Legal Issues

Peter Jenkins — 2007-08-16T01:12:20-00:00

Journal of Futures Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1. (August 2006), pp. 23-42.

How to Live In A Simulation

Robin Hanson — 2007-08-16T01:10:03-00:00

Journal of Evolution and Technology (September 2001)