University of Michigan Press – förlag

Anne Carson’s works re-think genre in some of the most unusual and nuanced ways that few writers ever attempt, from her lyric essays, enigmatic poems, and novels in verse to further forays into video and comics and collaborative performance. Carson’s pathbreaking translations of Ancient Greek poetry and drama, as well as her scholarship on everything from Sappho to Celan, only continue to demonstrate the unique vision she has for what’s possible for a work of literature to become. Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre is the first book of essays dedicated to the breadth of Anne Carson’s works, individually, spanning from Eros the Bittersweet through Red Doc. With contributions from Kazim Ali, Dan Beachy-Quick, Julie Carr, Harmony Holiday, Cole Swensen, Eleni Sikelianos, and many others (including translators, poets, essayists, scholars, novelists, critics, and collaborators themselves), we learn from Carson’s greatest admirers and closest readers about the books that moved and inspired them.

The influence of Zen Master Ikkyū (1394-1481) permeates the full field of medieval Japanese aesthetics. Though best known as a poet, he was central to the shaping and reshaping of practices in calligraphy, Noh theater, tea ceremony, and rock gardening, all of which now define Japan’s sense of its cultural tradition. Ikkyū is unique in Zen for letting his love of all appearance occupy him until it destroys any possibility for safety or seclusion.  In his poetry, he turns the eye of enlightenment to all phenomena: politics, pine trees, hard meditation practice, sex, wine. A lifelong outsider to religious establishments, Ikkyū nonetheless accepted Imperial command to rebuild his home temple, Daitoku-ji, destroyed in the civil wars. He died before that project was complete.   The poems in this collection express the unborn bliss of Ikkyū’s realization and equally his devastation at the horrors of this world. They are peopled with ancient Chinese poets, cantankerous Japanese Zen Masters, contemporary warlords, and his lover Mori, a blind musician who lived with Ikkyū the last eleven years of his life. All of this is his Buddhism. His awakening outshines the small idols of reason, emotion, self, desire, doctrine, even of Buddhism itself.

Theorizing Self in Samoa develops a new theory of the self in culture through a psychological and historical ethnography of Samoa. As in many non-Western cultures, Samoan understandings of the self are more sociocentric--accentuating the social roles that people play--than egocentric--emphasizing individual, interior feelings and perceptions. Yet in Samoa, as in any culture, aspects of the self that are not emphasized in cultural explanations of personhood continually reappear, and must somehow be accounted for. Jeannette Marie Mageo argues that all cultures attempt to encompass these stray experiences of the self within a discursive system. She introduces a way of charting human development through cultural discourses, which helps reveal how emotion, gender, and sexuality are constructed in Samoan society and other cultures, including our own. The second half of the book explores the effects of cultural contact and colonialization on the innermost experience of cultural subjects. With its long ethnographic record, Samoa provides a unique opportunity to consider the dialectic between historical change and personal experience, opening a perspective on the ways in which cultural history is forever leaving its fingerprints upon human lives. Theorizing Self in Samoa marks out important territory for psychological anthropology and students of Oceania, and will appeal also to students and scholars in cultural studies, women''s studies, and history. Jeannette Marie Mageo is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Washington State University.

The Mind of the Slave untangles the double nature of slaves as property and as human beings under the law in the Roman world. As human beings, slaves had free will and legally recognized autonomy while acting for their owner. Although their autonomy was fundamental to the Roman economy, it had the potential to lead to insecurity in the day-to-day experiences of the owner and enslaved person. Will an enslaved agent decide to act in the best interest of their owner? To sell their secrets? To run away? These moments of insecurity are the subject of this book; they reveal an owner’s struggle to know the mind of the slave and to reconcile ownership over a reasoning, emotional, and purposive human being. Nicole J. Giannella argues that this reliance on the mind of the slave reveals fault lines in the ownership of the enslaved. This is where we can glimpse beyond the trappings of law and see the need for negotiation, incentives, and ultimately, the trust that the owner puts in their slave.  In order to place Roman jurists in conversation with both technical and literary sources, Giannella grounds this study in philology and argues that conceptions of the mind of the slave were at the heart of legal and cultural debates about the nature of slavery and ownership. It also contributes to a wider debate about selfhood and autonomy, since philosophers often used the figure of the slave as a representation of humanity as its limits.

“A clear, trenchant book on a topic of enormous importance... Overall this is a courageous plunge into boiling waters. If it helps propel forward a debate that has hardly begun in this country it will have performed a signal scholarly and political function.” —Tony Judt, New York University “. . . a pioneering text. . . . [A]s such it will take pride of place in a brewing debate.” —Gary Sussman, Tel Aviv University The One-State Solution demonstrates that Israeli settlements have already encroached on the occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the extent that any Palestinian state in those areas is unviable. It reveals the irreversible impact of Israel’s settlement grid by summarizing its physical, demographic, financial, and political dimensions. Virginia Tilley explains why we should assume that this grid will not be withdrawn—or its expansion reversed—by reviewing the role of the key political actors: the Israeli government, the United States, the Arab states, and the European Union. Finally, the book addresses the daunting obstacles to a one-state solution—including major revision of the Zionist dream but also Palestinian and other regional resistance—and offers some ideas about how those obstacles might be addressed.   Virginia Tilley is Chief Research Specialist in the Democracy and Governance Division of the Human Research Council in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Fate of the Object traces the historical shift in focus from the "difficult" essential object of modernist theater, art, and poetry to its transformation as a sign in a postmodern field of signs. In modern art, the central object had been the abstract painting; in theater, the body of the actor; in poetry, the sonic, visual and grammatical elements of the poem. Spanning several disciplinary boundaries, this ambitious and pioneering book examines how the very process of refinement to locate the essential modernist object dissolves the figure of that object into its signifying ground. Jon Erickson argues that this historical shift from modern object to postmodern sign reflects significant transformations in capitalist society -- among them the shift from a production economy to a service economy, the change from a sensually rich to a conceptually alienated cultural consciousness, and the rise of poststructuralist theory as the predominant determiner of value within contemporary art culture. Erickson examines the body as the central object of theater and performance through the theories of Craig, Sartre, Brecht, Artaud, and Grotowski. Paradigmatic for the problematic relation of body/object to sign within postmodernism is his analysis of Genet’s The Balcony and Beckett''s Krapp''s Last Tape. The art chapter discusses such artists as Malevich, Ad Reinhardt, Duchamp, Warhol and Kosuth, tracing the progression of the abstract painting to its reduction or disappearance in conceptualism and minimalism. The poetry chapter examines Pound''s Imagism, Concrete and Sound Poetry, and the contributions of Gertrude Stein and the recent Language Poets. Finally, the author questions the role poststructuralist theory has played in the shift from modern object to postmodern sign and how it may affect our attitudes toward the materiality of the world. Jon Erickson is Assistant Professor of Drama, Ohio State University.

The first comprehensive analysis of the full range of antiterror initiatives undertaken in the United States after the 2001 terrorist attacks Unlike earlier books published shortly after the September 11 attacks that focus on the Patriot Act, More Secure, Less Free? covers the Patriot Act but goes well beyond, analyzing Total Information Awareness, Terrorist Information and Prevention System (TIPS), Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II), and a number of other "second wave" antiterror initiatives. It''s also the first book of its kind to go beyond federal measures to explain the devolution of antiterror policies to the states, and now to the military as well. Author Mark Sidel discusses the continuing debates on antiterror law at the state level, with a focus on the important states of New York, California, and Michigan, and explains how the military-through an informant program known as "Eagle Eyes"-is now taking a direct hand in domestic antiterror efforts. The volume also discusses and analyzes crucially important aspects of American antiterror policy that have been largely ignored in other volumes and discusses the effects of antiterror policy on the American academic world and the American nonprofit sector, for example. And it provides the first comparative perspectives on U.S. antiterror policy yet published in an American volume, discussing antiterror initiatives in Great Britain, Australia, and India and contrasting those to the American experience. More Secure, Less Free? is important and essential reading for anyone interested in an analytical perspective on American antiterror policy since September 11 that goes well beyond the Patriot Act.

Mark Sidel is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa and a research scholar at the University''s Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

In an era when human lives are increasingly measured and weighed in relation to the medical and scientific, notions of what is “normal” have changed drastically. While it is no longer useful to think of a person’s particular race, gender, sexual orientation, or choice as “normal,” the concept continues to haunt us in other ways. In The End of Normal, Lennard J. Davis explores changing perceptions of body and mind in social, cultural, and political life as the twenty-first century unfolds. The book’s provocative essays mine the worlds of advertising, film, literature, and the visual arts as they consider issues of disability, depression, physician-assisted suicide, medical diagnosis, transgender, and other identities.

Using contemporary discussions of biopower and biopolitics, Davis focuses on social and cultural production—particularly on issues around the different body and mind. The End of Normal seeks an analysis that works comfortably in the intersection between science, medicine, technology, and culture, and will appeal to those interested in cultural studies, bodily practices, disability, science and medical studies, feminist materialism, psychiatry, and psychology.

"Deployed is an important and deeply moving book. Here, in this story, the heroic tradition of the American citizen-soldier lives on." ---Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor, Boston University, and author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

"Whatever your feelings about Iraq, Deployed is an important and compelling work that illuminates the real human cost of the war, and gives voice to those compelled to fight it." ---Ken Wells, Senior Editor, Condé Nast Portfolio

"Currently, there are few to no books dealing with the sociology of Iraq, and even fewer have empirical data on the experiences of American soldiers. More important, this work provides a strong and needed voice for soldiers---their words are compelling, rich, and moving." ---Morten Ender, Professor of Sociology, United States Military Academy at West Point

"This is a unique book that weaves historical, ethnographic, and organizational approaches for a study of Iraq-War military reservists. . . . the authors'' findings challenge the pervading wisdom on reservists'' motivations for service; the chemistry between family, reserve duty, and relations with regular military; and the effect that service in Iraq had on them." ---Jerry Lembcke, Associate Professor of Sociology, Holy Cross College

What is it like to be one of the citizen-soldiers summoned to duty in Iraq and Afghanistan? The events of 9/11 were a call to arms for many reservists, as shock, anger, and fear propelled large numbers to volunteer for the opportunity to serve their country in the Middle East. Even the most patriotic, however, had not expected that the wars would last so long or that the Army Reserve would supply so much of the manpower.

Using the soldiers'' own voices, Deployed draws upon the life stories of members of an Army Reserve MP Company, who were called to extraordinary service after September 11. The book explores how and why they joined the Army Reserve, how they dealt with the seismic changes in their lives during and after deployment, the evolution of their relationships inside and outside their military unit, and their perspectives on the U.S. Army.

Musheno and Ross uncover five pathways that led these citizens to join the reserves, showing how basic needs and cultural idioms combined to stimulate enlistments. Whatever path led to enlistment, the authors find that citizen-soldiers fall into three distinct categories: adaptive reservists who adjust quickly to the huge changes in their lives abroad and at home, struggling reservists whose troubles are more a product of homegrown circumstances than experiences specific to serving in a war zone, and reservists who are dismissive of military life while they live it and oppose the war even as they fight it. Perhaps most important, Deployed challenges the prevailing stereotype of returning soldiers as war-damaged citizens.

Jacket photograph: AP Photo/Hutchinson News, Travis Morisse.

"David Kairys is one of the grand long-distance runners in the struggle for justice in America. His brilliant legal mind and superb lawyerly skills are legendary. This marvelous book is his gift to us!" ---Cornel West, Professor of Religion and African American Studies, Princeton University, and award-winning author of Race Matters

Philadelphia Freedom is the spellbinding tale of an idealistic young lawyer coming of age in the political cauldron of the 1960s and 1970s. From his immersion in the civil rights movement to his determined court battles to quell criminal violence by Philadelphia police, Kairys recounts how he helped make history in the city of brotherly love." ---William K. Marimow, Editor and Executive Vice President, Philadelphia Inquirer, and recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes

"In the current climate of political deception and the trampling of our civil rights, Kairys''s compelling book is a clenched fist, a prayer for social justice and a call to conscience." ---Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist and former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist

"With engaging, insider stories of innovative legal strategies of a truly creative lawyer, this book evokes the ebullient spirit of progressive social change launched in the 1960s and should be read by aspiring and practicing lawyers as well as anyone interested in American social history. Philadelphia Freedom reads like a suspense novel and reveals how novel legal and political thinking can and does make a real difference to individuals and to the quality of justice." ---Martha L. Minow, Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard University

"David Kairys''s compelling book properly explains the vital role that civil rights attorneys play in our system of justice." ---Judge John E. Jones III, United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and presiding judge in the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case

A memoir that is also a compelling page-turner, Philadelphia Freedom is the poignant, informative, often inspiring account of renowned civil-rights lawyer David Kairys''s personal quest for achieving social justice during the turbulent 1960s and 70s.

Philadelphia Freedom brings us intimately and directly into Kairys''s burgeoning law career and the struggles of the 60s as his professional and private life navigated the turmoil and promise of the civil rights and antiwar movements.

Many of the cases Kairys took on involved discrimination and equal protection, freedom of speech, and government malfeasance. Kairys is perhaps most well known for his victory in the Camden 28 draft board case, in which the FBI set up a sting of the Catholic anti-war left at the behest of the highest levels of government.

The stories and cases range from nationally important and recognizable---the family of the scientist the CIA unwittingly gave LSD in the 1950s; the leading race discrimination case against the FBI; Dr. Benjamin Spock''s First Amendment case before the Supreme Court; the city handgun lawsuits Kairys conceived---to those he encountered in his early work as a public defender. The characters include public figures such as FBI Directors J. Edgar Hoover and Louis Freeh; CIA Director William Colby; Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter; New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer; U.S. Attorneys General Edward Levi and John Mitchell; Georgia Governor Lester Maddox; Pennsylvania Governor, former Philadelphia Mayor, and Democratic National Committee chair Ed Rendell; Philadelphia Mayor and Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo. But some of the most memorable are not well known, involving regular people caught up in the often heartless machinery of the courts and legal system.

Though it reads like a novel, with all the elements of character, plot, and suspense, Philadelphia Freedom also has historical significance as a firsthand account of the 1960s and 70s and contains social commentary about race as well as insights and major perspectives on the nature and social role of law.

David Kairys is Professor of Law at Beasley School of Law, Temple University. He was a full-time civil rights lawyer from 1968 to 1990.

In the spirit of great utopian writing that dares to hope for a better world, Imagining America in 2033 takes place in a fictional yet achievable future America—a time when progressive, liberal ideals inform politics and citizens alike.

At the heart of Herbert J. Gans''s utopian narrative is the vision of progress with fairness on which the best of American idealism has been built. Part utopia, part realism, Imagining America in 2033 is also a liberal''s dream of life after Bush and a set of progressive yet practical guidelines for restoring sanity and intelligence to nearly every aspect of public and political life post-Bush.

Herbert J. Gans, one of the most influential and prolific sociologists and social commentators of our time, achieves a realistic utopia set mostly in the second and third decades of the century. In Gans''s imagined future, elected officials, policymakers, activists, and citizens have transformed America into a much more humane and effective democracy. The book features three Democratic presidents; the major new domestic, foreign, and social policies their administrations pursue; and the political battles they fight.

Gans provides chapters on an exhaustive list of social, political, and economic policy issues: jobs; war; tax reform; global warming; economic, racial, gender, and religious equality; family policies; the creation of affordable housing and energy saving communities; education reform; and more. While hopeful and idealistic, many of Gans''s proposals---such as the concept of the nurse-doctor, in which nurses increasingly take on tasks previously handled only by medical doctors within a framework of national health care---are ideas innovative enough that they should be taken seriously by actual policymakers.

Imagining America in 2033 is lively and accessible, with an appeal for general readers, policy hounds, and the politically savvy alike.

Has the imperial presidency returned? "Well written and, while indispensable for college courses, should appeal beyond academic audiences to anyone interested in how well we govern ourselves. . . . I cannot help regarding it as a grand sequel for my own The Imperial Presidency." ---Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Has the imperial presidency returned? This question has been on the minds of many contemporary political observers, as recent American administrations have aimed to consolidate power. In The New Imperial Presidency, Andrew Rudalevige suggests that the congressional framework meant to advise and constrain presidential conduct since Watergate has slowly eroded. Rudalevige describes the evolution of executive power in our separated system of governance. He discusses the abuse of power that prompted what he calls the "resurgence regime" against the imperial presidency and inquires as to how and why---over the three decades that followed Watergate---presidents have regained their standing. Chief executives have always sought to interpret constitutional powers broadly. The ambitious president can choose from an array of strategies for pushing against congressional authority; finding scant resistance, he will attempt to expand executive control. Rudalevige''s important and timely work reminds us that the freedoms secured by our system of checks and balances do not proceed automatically but depend on the exertions of public servants and the citizens they serve. His story confirms the importance of the "living Constitution," a tradition of historical experiences overlaying the text of the Constitution itself.

"A definitive study of an extremely important, though curiously neglected, Supreme Court decision, Pierce v. Society of Sisters." ---Robert O''Neil, Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Virginia School of Law

"A careful and captivating examination of a dramatic and instructive clash between nationalism and religious pluralism, and of the ancient but ongoing struggle for control over the education of children and the formation of citizens." ---Richard W. Garnett, Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Notre Dame Law School

"A well-written, well-researched blend of law, politics, and history." ---Joan DelFattore, Professor of English and Legal Studies, University of Delaware

In 1922, the people of Oregon passed legislation requiring all children to attend public schools. For the nativists and progressives who had campaigned for the Oregon School Bill, it marked the first victory in a national campaign to homogenize education---and ultimately the populace. Private schools, both secular and religious, vowed to challenge the law. The Catholic Church, the largest provider of private education in the country and the primary target of the Ku Klux Klan campaign, stepped forward to lead the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the court declared the Oregon School Bill unconstitutional and ruled that parents have the right to determine how their children should be educated. Since then, Pierce has provided a precedent in many cases pitting parents against the state.

Paula Abrams is Professor of Constitutional Law at Lewis & Clark Law School.

The essays look at the consequences that legal practice has on the lives of its practitioners as well as on the individual legal subject and on the shape of shared identities. These essays challenge liberal and communitarian notions of what it means to live the law.   In the first of the essays, Pnina Lahav presents a study of the Chicago Seven Trial to paint a picture of the law''s power to serve as a site for the definition of a collective group identity. In contrast, Sarah Gordon focuses on the experience of an individual legal subject, namely, the defendant in the Hester Vaughn trial, a notorious nineteenth-century case of infanticide. Frank Munger looks at how law constructs the identity of women and explores the strategies by which poor women resist the law''s construction of their dependency. In the fourth essay, Vicki Schultz offers a moral vision of equality that straddles the liberal and communitarian positions with her articulation of the concept of a "life''s work." Lastly, Annette Wieviorka examines the recent trial of Maurice Papon for complicity in crimes against humanity to reveal how the very identity of a nation--in this case, France--can be defined through juridical and legal acts. Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science and Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, Amherst College. Lawrence Douglas is Associate Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, Amherst College. Martha Umphrey is Assistant Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, Amherst College.

"Eley brilliantly probes transformations in the historians'' craft over the past four decades. I found A Crooked Line engrossing, insightful, and inspiring." --Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers'' Republic "A Crooked Line brilliantly captures the most significant shifts in the landscape of historical scholarship that have occurred in the last four decades. Part personal history, part insightful analysis of key methodological and theoretical historiographical tendencies since the late 1960s, always thoughtful and provocative, Eley''s book shows us why history matters to him and why it should also matter to us." --Robert Moeller, University of California, Irvine "Part genealogy, part diagnosis, part memoir, Eley''s account of the histories of social and cultural history is a tour de force." --Antoinette Burton, Professor of History and Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies, University of Illinois "Eley''s reflections on the changing landscape of academic history in the last forty years will interest and benefit all students of the discipline. Both a native informant and an analyst in this account, Eley combines the two roles superbly to produce one of most engaging and compelling narratives of the recent history of History." --Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe Using his own intellectual biography as a narrative device, Geoff Eley tracks the evolution of historical understanding in our time from social history through the so-called "cultural turn," and back again to a broad history of society. A gifted writer, Eley carefully winnows unique experiences from the universal, and uses the interplay of the two to draw the reader toward an organic understanding of how historical thinking (particularly the work of European historians) has evolved under the influence of new ideas. His work situates history within History, and offers students, scholars, and general readers alike a richly detailed, readable guide to the enduring value of historical ideas. Geoff Eley is Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Many countries have experimented with different electoral rules in order either to increase involvement in the political system or make it easier to form stable governments. Barry Ames explores this important topic in one of the world''s most populous and important democracies, Brazil. This book locates one of the sources of Brazil''s "crisis of governance" in the nation''s unique electoral system, a system that produces a multiplicity of weak parties and individualistic, pork-oriented politicians with little accountability to citizens. It explains the government''s difficulties in adopting innovative policies by examining electoral rules, cabinet formation, executive-legislative conflict, party discipline and legislative negotiation. The book combines extensive use of new sources of data, ranging from historical and demographic analysis in focused comparisons of individual states to unique sources of data for the exploration of legislative politics. The discussion of party discipline in the Chamber of Deputies is the first multivariate model of party cooperation or defection in Latin America that includes measures of such important phenomena as constituency effects, pork-barrel receipts, ideology, electoral insecurity, and intention to seek reelection. With a unique data set and a sophisticated application of rational choice theory, Barry Ames demonstrates the effect of different electoral rules for election to Brazil''s legislature. The readership of this book includes anyone wanting to understand the crisis of democratic politics in Brazil. The book will be especially useful to scholars and students in the areas of comparative politics, Latin American politics, electoral analysis, and legislative studies. Barry Ames is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Comparative Politics and Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.

Given the massive demographic changes in the United States during the past few decades, understanding the place of immigrants in the public sphere has never been more critical. Democracy''s Promise examines both the challenges and opportunities posed to American civic institutions by the presence of increasing numbers of immigrants. Author Janelle Wong argues that the low levels of political participation among contemporary immigrants are not due to apathy or preoccupation with their homeland, but to the inability of American political parties and advocacy organizations to mobilize immigrant voters. Wong''s rich study of Chinese and Mexican immigrants in New York and Los Angeles complements traditional studies of political behavior and civic institutions while offering a nuanced examination of immigrants'' political activity.

Democracy''s Promise will appeal to a broad spectrum of social scientists and ethnic studies scholars who study or teach immigration, racial and ethnic politics, political participation, civic engagement, and American political institutions. In addition, it will appeal to community organizers and party activists who are interested in issues of race and ethnicity, immigration, political participation, and political mobilization.

Janelle Wong is Assistant Professor of Political Science and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

"As political parties (perhaps) decline in the United States, as civic organizations (perhaps) move away from direct participatory politics, and as the number of immigrants certainly increases--what will link new Americans to the political realm? Janelle Wong answers this important question clearly, with elegance, nuance, rich description, and galvanizing provocativeness. Her evidence is compelling and her sense of urgency about the need for parties to look beyond short-term interests even more so." --Jennifer L. Hochschild, Harvard University "Wong draws on the Latino and Asian immigrant experience, with specific examples from the Chinese and Mexican communities of New York and Los Angeles, to show how the political parties have largely failed to organize these groups and why labor unions and immigrant advocacy organizations have stepped in to take their place. Far from ''disuniting'' America, she clearly shows that bringing these groups into the political fray is central to the project of renewing American democracy." --John Mollenkopf, CUNY Graduate Center "A scathing critique of the role of parties in the mobilization of new immigrants and an invaluable analysis of alternative pathways of mobilization through community organizations." --Michael Jones-Correa, Cornell University "By employing multiple empirical methods, including in-depth interviews and sophisticated survey analyses, Janelle Wong provides a compelling account of the political activities and allegiances of America''s Asian and Latino immigrants that challenges much conventional wisdom. Often the political parties are failing to reach out to these groups, and often immigrants remain concerned about their home countries; but they are nonetheless increasingly active in American politics, in ways that may do much to shape the course of American political development in the 21st century. Democracy''s Promise is a major contribution to our understanding of this crucial dimension of American politics." --Rogers M. Smith, University of Pennsylvania "Democracy''s Promise challenges political parties to reexamine their priorities for mobilizing new voters, and identifies the critical role civic institutions play in invigorating participation among immigrant citizens. Wong''s analysis is at once precise and expansive; illuminating the contours of Latino and Asian American political incorporation and provoking thoughtful debate on inclusion in democratic theory." --Jane Junn, Rutgers University

“Never before has the case been more compellingly made that America’s dependence on a free and abundant water supply has become an illusion. Cynthia Barnett does it by telling us the stories of the amazing personalities behind our water wars, the stunning contradictions that allow the wettest state to have the most watered lawns, and the thorough research that makes her conclusions inescapable. Barnett has established herself as one of Florida’s best journalists and Mirage is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the state.”

—Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau Chief, Miami Herald

“Mirage is the finest general study to date of the freshwater-supply crisis in Florida. Well-meaning villains abound in Cynthia Barnett’s story, but so too do heroes, such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr., Nathaniel Reed, and Marjorie Harris Carr. The author’s research is as thorough as her prose is graceful. Drinking water is the new oil. Get used to it.”

—Michael Gannon, Distinguished Professor of history, University of Florida, and author of Florida: A Short History

“With lively prose and a journalist’s eye for a good story, Cynthia Barnett offers a sobering account of water scarcity problems facing Florida—one of our wettest states—and the rest of the East Coast. Drawing on lessons learned from the American West, Mirage uses the lens of cultural attitudes about water use and misuse to plead for reform. Sure to engage and fascinate as it informs.”

—Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Arizona, and author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters

Part investigative journalism, part environmental history, Mirage reveals how the eastern half of the nation—historically so wet that early settlers predicted it would never even need irrigation—has squandered so much of its abundant freshwater that it now faces shortages and conflicts once unique to the arid West.

Florida’s parched swamps and supersized residential developments set the stage in the first book to call attention to the steady disappearance of freshwater in the American East, from water-diversion threats in the Great Lakes to tapped-out freshwater aquifers along the Atlantic seaboard.

Told through a colorful cast of characters including Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Texas oilman Boone Pickens, Mirage ferries the reader through the key water-supply issues facing America and the globe: water wars, the politics of development, inequities in the price of water, the bottled-water industry, privatization, and new-water-supply schemes.

From its calamitous opening scene of a sinkhole swallowing a house in Florida to its concluding meditation on the relationship between water and the American character, Mirage is a compelling and timely portrait of the use and abuse of freshwater in an era of rapidly vanishing natural resources.

Siegfried Wenzel''s groundbreaking study seeks to describe and analyze the linguistically mixed, or macaronic, sermons in late fourteenth-century England.  Not only are these works of considerable religious interest, they provide extensive information on their literary, linguistic, and cultural milieux.   Macaronic Sermons begins by offering a typology of such works: those in which English words offer glosses, or offer structural functions, or offer neither of the two but yet are syntactically integrated.  This last group is then examined in detail: reasons are given for this usage and for its origins, based on the realities of fourteenth-century England.   Siefriend Wenzel draws valuable conclusions about the linguistic status quo of the era, together with the extent of education, the audiences'' expectations, and the ways in which the authors'' minds worked.   Obviously of interest to scholars and students of early English literature, Macaronic Sermons also contains much valuable information for specialists in language development or oral theory, and for those interested in multicultural societies.

The stories in A Near-Perfect Gift revolve around the often hardscrabble small-town life in one rural village. Like any other community inhabited by the human race, it''s a place where the banal and the improbable coalesce, a place with its share of common tragedies and uncommon madmen: some howl at the moon, while others turn out to be heroes. There are the two old ladies down the street who might be witches and must be exorcised, and the man who plucks chickens for a living. It is within the perimeter of this offbeat microcosm of the world that seemingly small questions---often the kind that children ask, arising from a child''s imagined understanding of how the adult world works---assume an eerie portent: Was that a snake beneath the woodpile? Could a pregnant bat climb out of a hole in the ground? The answers never cease to surprise.

Praise for One Mile Past Dangerous Curve: "This book aims to be about the best of us as it shows us at our least. Thank goodness for Darrell Spencer, the only writer in America to be trusted on the subjects of faith, love, weal and woe." ---Lee K. Abbott " . . . absolutely dire and dear, his best book, a novel about American life right now. . . . this book is accurate, acerbic, and heartfelt at once." ---Ron Carlson Praise for Darrell Spencer: "Mr. Spencer''s writing crackles with freshness and lucidity, featuring characters who slide into one another in random encounters and relationships." ---New York Times Book Review "[Spencer] possesses a remarkable ear for the cadence of everyday speech." ---Michael Chabon From the acclaimed author of Caution: Men in Trees and A Woman Packing a Pistol comes a tale of kinship, love, and lawlessness. One Mile Past Dangerous Curve is the story of the Dancers---a family on the verge of collapse. Glen Dancer has come to Ohio to set up another in a series of Snapper franchises. But in the midst of construction, Glen finds himself fighting a painful and futile battle with cancer. His son Eddie, recently divorced, moves from Las Vegas to help. A sign painter by trade, Eddie finds only intermittent work in town until the day a mysterious and wealthy businessman commissions a series of twenty road signs, each different, all featuring odd, cryptic messages. It is on a back-country road, where Eddie has gone to assemble one of the signs, that some previously vague threats become concrete. Though Eddie doesn''t know it, the neighboring woods hide a secret, a secret that a gun-toting rural gang wants to keep at any cost.

A compelling insider''s account of the fight for educational desegregation, from one of its most dedicated and outspoken heroes. A new afterword explains the author''s controversial belief that the moment for litigating educational equality has passed, clear-sightedly critiquing his own courtroom strategies and the courts'' responses, before closing with an assessment of the economic and social changes that he feels have already moved us "beyond busing." "An extraordinarily informative and thoughtful book describing the process of bringing Brown [v. Board of Education] North and the impact this process had upon national attitudes toward desegregation." --Drew S. Days III, Yale Law Journal "An original analysis of a tough subject. A must-read for all who care about opportunity for all our children." --Donna E. Shalala, President, University of Miami "Paul Dimond remains a passionate and caring voice for inner-city students, whether in his advocacy of school desegregation, school choice plans, or school finance reform. He illuminates these issues as one who participated in the major education cases and as a perceptive scholar." --Mark Yudof, Chancellor, The University of Texas System "A must-read for anyone who wants to understand America''s continued failure to give inner-city children a quality education or to do something about it!" --Sheryll Cashin, Author of The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream "Dimond is particularly good at relating his slice of legal history to the broader developments of the 1970s, and his occasional remarks about trial tactics are amusing and instructive. Dimond''s honesty about both his successes and failures makes his book required reading for civil rights lawyers." --Lawrence T. Gresser, Michigan Law Review "A fascinating first-hand account of 1970s northern school desegregation decisions." --Neal E. Devins, American Bar Foundation Research Journal "Dimond reminds the liberal reader of the promise that lies in the empowerment of ordinary families to choose their own schools." --John E. Coons, Professor of Law, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley Paul R. Dimond is counsel to Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone, Michigan''s largest law firm; chairman of McKinley, a national commercial real estate investment and management firm; and chairman or member of the board of trustees of numerous education, community, and civic organizations. He spent four years as President Clinton''s Special Assistant for Economic Policy.

Mr. Democrat tells the story of Jim Farley, Franklin D. Roosevelt''s campaign manager. As party boss, Farley experienced unprecedented success in the New Deal years. And like his modern counterpart Karl Rove, Farley enjoyed unparalleled access and power. Unlike Rove, however, Farley was instrumental in the creation of an overwhelming new majority in American politics, as the emergence of the New Deal transformed the political landscape of its time. Mr. Democrat is timely and indispensable not just because Farley was a fascinating and unduly neglected figure, but also because an understanding of his career advances our knowledge of how and why he revolutionized the Democratic Party and American politics in the age of the New Deal. Daniel Scroop is Lecturer in American History, University of Liverpool School of History.

“A powerful, detailed, and exceptionally balanced critique of NCLB. It offers some hope for how we might overcome its faults. No legislator or educational expert should be allowed to get away with not reading it—whether to agree or disagree. It’s a must learning experience.”

—Deborah Meier, Senior Scholar and Adjunct Professor, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University, and author of In Schools We Trust

“A concise, highly readable, and balanced account of NCLB, with insightful and realistic suggestions for reform. Teachers, professors, policymakers, and parents—this is the one book about NCLB you ought to read.”

—James E. Ryan, William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor, University of Virginia School of Law

This far-reaching new study looks at the successes and failures of one of the most ambitious and controversial educational initiatives since desegregation—the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

NCLB’s opponents criticize it as underfunded and unworkable, while supporters see it as a radical but necessary educational reform that evens the score between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Yet the most basic and important question remains unasked: “Can we ever really know if a child’s education is good?”

Ultimately, Scott Franklin Abernathy argues, policymakers must begin from this question, rather than assuming that any test can accurately measure the elusive thing we call “good” education.

"The Stamp of Class addresses an important area that has not received sufficient attention. Lenhart directly confronts and deeply analyzes these questions while offering readers his clear, informative discussion." -Lorenzo Thomas The Stamp of Class explores the nature of reading poetry in the context of class and its themes and sheds new light on how this important yet little-heralded subject affects the poet''s life and work. While numerous works have taken up the question of race and gender as they relate to literary creation, this is the first book of its kind to probe the interplay between class and American poetry. Author Gary Lenhart considers poetry and class across a wide variety of time periods and poetic trends and reflects on a range of influential poets from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. The essays in The Stamp of Class deal with the question of class as reflected in the works of Tracie Morris, Tillie Olsen, Melvin Tolson, William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, and others. The work is rooted in the author''s own experiences as a working-class poet and teacher and is the result of more than a decade of exploration. Poet and scholar Gary Lenhart is Lecturer in English at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. His most recent books of poetry are Father and Son Night, Light Heart, and One at a Time. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including the American Poetry Review, American Book Review, and Exquisite Corpse.

Pilar is a capable, energetic merchant in the small, Peruvian highland settlement of Chiuchin. Genovena, an unmarried day laborer in the same town, faces an impoverished old age without children to support her. Carmen is the wife of a prosperous farmer in the agricultural community of Mayobamba, eleven thousand feet above Chiuchin in the Andean sierra. Mariana, a madre soltera—single mother—without a husband or communal land of her own, also resides in Mayobamba.

These lives form part of an interlocking network that the authors carefully examine in Women of the Andes. In doing so, they explore the riddle of women’s structural subordination by analyzing the social, political, and economic realities of life in Peru. They examine theoretical explanations of sexual hierarchies against the backdrop of life histories. The result is a study that pinpoints the mechanisms perpetuating sexual repression and traces the impact of social change and national policy on women’s lives.

In Centaurs and Amazons, Page duBois offers a prehistory of hierarchy. Using structural anthropology, symbolic analysis, and recent literary theory, she demonstrates a shift in Greek thought from the fifth to the fourth century B.C. that had a profound influence upon subsequent Western culture and politics.

Through an analysis of mythology, drama, sculpture, architecture, and Greek vase painting, duBois documents the transition from a system of thought that organized the experience of difference in terms of polarity and analogy to one based upon a relatively rigid hierarchical scheme. This was the beginning of "the great chain of being," the philosophical construct that all life was organized in minute gradations of superiority and inferiority. This scheme, in various guises, has continued to influence philosophical and political thought.

The author''s intelligent and discriminating use of scholarship from various fields makes Centaurs and Amazons an impressive interdisciplinary study of interest to classicists, feminist scholars, historians, art historians, anthropologists, and political scientists.

"Ambitious, provocative, and wide-ranging, this rich collection of essays from U.S. and South African perspectives reflects the thinking of thoughtful advocates of affirmative action." ---William G. Bowen, President Emeritus, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and President Emeritus, Princeton University

"Thoughtful commentary from outstanding experts on affirmative action’s future in two countries struggling to overcome a legacy of racial injustice." ---Derek Bok, 300th Anniversary University Research Professor, and President Emeritus, Harvard University

"An enormously important comparative study and reflection on affirmative (U.S.) and corrective (South Africa) action with exhaustive and sensitive treatment of a vital topic." ---Kader Asmal, Professor of Law, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, and former Minister of Education, South Africa

A penetrating exploration of affirmative action''s continued place in 21st-century higher education, The Next Twenty-five Years assembles the viewpoints of some of the most influential scholars, educators, university leaders, and public officials. Its comparative essays span the political spectrum and dissect debates in two nations to elucidate the legal, political, social, economic, and moral dimensions of affirmative action in higher education and its role in contributing to a just, equitable, and vital society.

David L. Featherman is Professor of Sociology and Psychology and Founding Director of the Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society at the University of Michigan.

Martin Hall is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford, Greater Manchester, and previously was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cape Town.

Marvin Krislov is President of Oberlin College and previously was Vice President and General Counsel at the University of Michigan.

"A bold and challenging consideration of questions of development, economic globalization, communities and subjectivity from a unique feminist perspective. A must-read book for those who wish to understand restructuring and resistance in this era of intensified globalization." ---Isabella C. Bakker, York University "Bergeron''s pathbreaking analysis challenges orthodox development theories, questions current feminist economic thinking and highlights crucial new gendered challenges to globalization." ---Jane Parpart, Dalhousie University "Cutting-edge scholarship. Bergeron deftly engages the complexity of current debates while retaining clarity, improving analyses, and illuminating alternatives." ---V. S. Peterson, University of Arizona By tracing out the intersection between the imagined space of the national economy and the gendered construction of "expert" knowledge in development thought, Suzanne Bergeron provides a provocative analysis of development discourse and practice. By elaborating a framework of including/excluding economic subjects and activities in development economics, she provides a rich account of the role that economists have played in framing the contested political and cultural space of development. Bergeron''s account of the construction of the national economy as an object of development policy follows its shifting meanings through modernization and growth models, dependency theory, structural adjustment, and contemporary debates about globalization and highlights how intersections of nation and economy are based on gendered and colonial scripts. The author''s analysis of development debates effectively demonstrates that critics of development who ignore economists'' nation stories may actually bolster the formation they are attempting to subvert. Fragments of Development is essential reading for those interested in development studies, feminist economics, international political economy, and globalization studies.