Excelsior Editions – serie

Depicts the Cultural Revolution through stories in a variety of voices.Set against China's turbulent years between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, When Huai Flowers Bloom is the literary memoir of a young girl who manages to sustain love, imagination, and strength during this most chaotic time. With twelve separate yet interconnected stories, Shu Jiang Lu alternates between storyteller and listener as she relays haunting memories and explores the devastating effect of Mao's anticultural Cultural Revolution. Lu weaves together the voices of multiple real and fantastic characters: her parents and their treasured yet forbidden bookcase; the mysterious vendors beckoning from Pear Flower Alley; the immortal martial hero; the reactionary opera singer and the black demon novelist; the whispering ghost and dancing fairy; and the author herself, discovering her storyteller's voice in the military camps of her youth. When Huai Flowers Bloom is a poignant, persistent journey toward voice and freedom.

Challenges readers to rethink the way we view the nation's past and race relations in the present.Blending historical narrative with ideas for engaging young people as historians and thinkers, Alan J. Singer introduces readers to the truth about the history of slavery in New York State, and, by extension, about race in American society. Singer's perspective as a historian and a former secondary school social studies teacher offers a wealth of new information about the past and introduces people and events that have been erased from history.New York, both the city and the state, were centers of the abolitionist struggle to finally end human bondage; however, at the same time, enslaved Africans built the infrastructure of the colonial city. The author shows teachers how to develop ways to teach about this very difficult topic. He shows them how to deal with racial preconceptions and tensions in the classroom and calls upon teachers and students to become historical activists, conduct research, write reports, and present their findings to the public.

Overturns traditional views of the origins of fairy tales and documents their actual origins and transmission.2009 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Where did Cinderella come from? Puss in Boots? Rapunzel? The origins of fairy tales are looked at in a new way in these highly engaging pages. Conventional wisdom holds that fairy tales originated in the oral traditions of peasants and were recorded for posterity by the Brothers Grimm during the nineteenth century. Ruth B. Bottigheimer overturns this view in a lively account of the origins of these well-loved stories. Charles Perrault created Cinderella and her fairy godmother, but no countrywoman whispered this tale into Perrault's ear. Instead, his Cinderella appeared only after he had edited it from the book of often amoral tales published by Giambattista Basile in Naples. Distinguishing fairy tales from folktales and showing the influence of the medieval romance on them, Bottigheimer documents how fairy tales originated as urban writing for urban readers and listeners. Working backward from the Grimms to the earliest known sixteenth-century fairy tales of the Italian Renaissance, Bottigheimer argues for a book-based history of fairy tales. The first new approach to fairy tale history in decades, this book answers questions about where fairy tales came from and how they spread, illuminating a narrative process long veiled by surmise and assumption.

The story of the Erie Canal's completion and its place in the larger narrative of American modernity and progress.Winner of the 2009 Annual Archives Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of the New York State Archives presented by the Board of Regents and the New State York Archives The stunning achievement of the Erie Canal's completion is brought to life in this riveting story. In the spring of 1821, thousands of workers descended on the isolated village of Lockport, New York, twenty miles east of Niagara Falls. Their goal was to dig and blast a waterway through the so-called Mountain Ridge, the escarpment over which the Niagara River flows, and to divert some of that river's flow eastward, thus completing the Erie Canal. This final obstacle would take five years to overcome, and the Lockport Locks, the ingenious device that carried boats to the top of the ridge, would come to be seen as an icon of American achievement-like the Erie Canal itself, a stairway to empire.Taking advantage of a rich trove of construction records, travelers' writings, and visual material, Stairway to Empire examines the triumphs and tensions of this iconic American accomplishment and its place in the larger narrative of American modernity and progress. In the decades that followed its completion, the canal rearranged political and economic power on the continent, forming new connections and rupturing old ones, and creating winners and losers in the process. Piercing the barrier of the Appalachian Mountains, the Erie Canal established New York City as the American metropolis, the North's economic ascendance over the South, and the United States as the dominant power in North America. Yet even as it explores these local and continental implications and the divergent meanings that have been attributed to them, Stairway to Empire also attends to the silences and shadows of a particular event (cutting through the Mountain Ridge), a particular place (Lockport), and the stories we have constructed to try to understand them.

Looks at the experience of being an exotic dancer in different kinds of strip clubs.Is stripping good or bad for the women who do it? According to sociologist Mindy S. Bradley-Engen, there's no simple answer. An exotic dancer's experiences can be both empowering and degrading: at times a dancer can feel like a goddess, at times ashamed and dirty. Drawing on extensive interviews as well as her own experiences as an exotic dancer, Bradley-Engen shows that strippers' work experiences are shaped by the types of establishments-the different worlds-in which they work. A typology of strip clubs emerges: the hustle club, the show club, and the social club, each with its own distinct culture, expectations, and challenges, each creating circumstances in which stripping can be good, bad, or indifferent. Going beyond the warring rhetorics of exploitation and empowerment, this book provides a rich and complex account of the realities of exotic dance and offers a fascinating, thought-provoking consideration for both academics and general readers.

A groundbreaking collection of forty-two Israeli poetic voices protesting the occupation of the West Bank.The eighty-eight poems in With an Iron Pen, all originally written in Hebrew, offer a collective protest to the continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Palestinian territories-"the sin of Judah," which is written "with an iron pen, engraved with the point of a diamond on the tablet of their hearts" (Jeremiah 17:1). Including such preeminent voices as Yehuda Amichai, Aharon Shabtai, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Meir Wieseltier, and Natan Zach, the forty-two poets in this groundbreaking anthology represent the full range of contemporary Hebrew poetry. Together, they turn an unforgiving gaze on the occupation, speaking with rage, shame, sorrow, and despair at the continuing violence that has defined the lives of Palestinians and Israelis over the years and the hopelessness that has permeated both societies. The result is a collection of poems that are as important for their compelling poetic beauty as for their significant political accomplishment. The original Hebrew edition, published in 2005, received accolades in the Israeli press for its comprehensive collection of dissenting voices and for its daring and beautiful poetry. With an Iron Pen is a must read for all who seek a better understanding of the occupation and the wider conflict in the Middle East.

Memoir and meditation on blindness.Finalist for the 2010 Minnesota Book Award presented by the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library Mara Faulkner grew up in a family shaped by Irish ancestry, a close-to-the-bone existence in rural North Dakota, and the secret of her father's blindness-along with the silence and shame surrounding it. Dennis Faulkner had retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease that gradually blinded him and one that may blind many members of his family, including the author. Moving and insightful, Going Blind explores blindness in its many permutations-within the context of the author's family, more broadly, as a disability marked by misconceptions, and as a widely used cultural metaphor. Mara Faulkner delicately weaves her family's story into an analysis of the roots and ramifications of the various metaphorical meanings of blindness, touching on the Catholic Church of the 1940s and 1950s, Japanese internment, the Germans from Russia who dominated her hometown, and the experiences of Native people in North Dakota. Neither sentimental nor dispassionate, the author asks whether it's possible to find gifts when sight is lost.

The story of a 17th century Mohawk woman's interaction with her land, the Jesuits, and the religion they brought.In The Reason for Crows, award-winning author Diance Glancy retells the story of Kateri Tekakwitha, a seventeenth-century Mohawk woman who converted to Christianity and later became known as the "Lily of the Mohawks." Left frail, badly scarred, and nearly blind from a smallpox epidemic that killed her parents, Kateri nevertheless took part in the daily activities of her village-gathering firewood, preparing meals, weaving, and treating the wounded after skirmishes with the French and enemy tribes. When the Jesuits arrived in her village, she received their message and converted to Christianity. After her conversion, she was scorned and persecuted by her fellow Indians and eventually left her home along the Mohawk River for a village the Jesuits had established for Christian Indians, where she died at the age of 24. In Glancy's imaginative and poetic retelling, Kateri's interior voice is intertwined with the interior voices of the Jesuit missionaries-the crows-who endured their own hardships crossing the ocean and establishing missions in an unfamiliar land. Together they tell a story of spiritual awakening and the internal conflicts that arise when cultures meet.

New York's fascinating history as presented in song.In New York Sings, musicologist and folklorist Jerry Silverman has compiled a remarkable collection of songs about the people, places, and events of New York's 400-year history-from Henry Hudson's Half Moon to Pete Seeger's Clearwater, from Montauk to Niagara Falls, from the sidewalks of New York to the lumber camps of the Adirondacks. The traditional songs of New York are among the oldest in the vast repertoire of the American songbook, and included here are songs from the colonial period, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War I, as well as songs about the immigrant experience, the Erie Canal, baseball, life in sweatshops and on farms, and hard times and ragtimes along the Bowery, Coney Island, and the Great White Way. The book provides the melody, lyrics, and guitar chord symbols for each song, as well as fascinating facts and stories about the songs, their composers, and the historical events and people described.

Brings a strikingly original perspective to Johnson's life, and suggests new ways of thinking about Johnson's part in creating a nation he did not live to see.William Johnson was scarcely more than a boy when he left Ireland and his Gaelic, Roman Catholic family to become a Protestant in the service of Britain's North American empire. In New York by 1738, Johnson moved to the frontiers along the Mohawk River, where he established himself as a fur trader and eventually became a landowner with vast estates. Serving as principal British intermediary with the Iroquois Confederacy, he commanded British, colonial, and Iroquois forces that defeated the French in the battle of Lake George in 1755, and he created the first groups of "rangers," who fought like American Indians and led the way to the Patriots' victories in the Revolution.As Fintan O'Toole's superbly researched, colorfully dramatic narrative makes clear, the key to Johnson's signal effectiveness was the style in which he lived as a "white savage." Johnson had two wives, one European, one Mohawk; became fluent in Mohawk; and pioneered the use of American Indians as active partners in the making of a new America. O'Toole's masterful use of the extraordinary documents written by Irish, Dutch, German, French, and American Indian participants in Johnson's drama enlivens the account of this heroic figure's legendary career. It also suggests why Johnson's early multiculturalism unraveled, and why the contradictions of his enterprise created a historical dead end.

One woman's journey to uncover her family's history and understand the ties that bind us to a particular place.Encompassing three centuries of manor lords and tenant farmers, Civil War heroes and renegade aunts, award-winning author Leila Philip tells the story of her ancestral Hudson Valley home, Talavera, and the mystery of her attachment to it. After her father's death in 1992, Leila and her family struggled to find the means to keep their farm intact. This uphill battle led her to examine the forces that compel a family to sacrifice almost everything to hold onto a particular piece of land.Newly republished with a folio of historic photographs and an epilogue that updates the story of the farm and the family to the present, A Family Place addresses the tensions between memory and recorded fact, inviting readers to take a new look at their own sense of home.

An interlinear edition of the spiritual classic that provides devanagari, transliterated Sanskrit, and English versions of the Gītā.For years, this edition of the Bhagavad Gītā has allowed all those with a lively interest in this spiritual classic to come into direct contact with the richness and resonance of the original text. Winthrop Sargeant's interlinear edition provides a word-for-word English translation along with the devanagari characters and the transliterated Sanskrit. Detailed grammatical commentary and page-by-page vocabularies are included, and a complete translation of each section is printed at the bottom of each page, allowing readers to turn the pages and appreciate the work in Sargeant's translation as well. Discussions of the language and setting of the Gītā are provided and, in this new edition, editor Christopher Key Chapple offers guidance on how to get the most out of this interlinear edition. Long a favorite of spiritual seekers and scholars, teachers and students, and lovers of world literature, Sargeant's edition endures as a great resource for twenty-first-century readers.

An interlinear edition of the spiritual classic that provides devanagari, transliterated Sanskrit, and English versions of the Gītā.For years, this edition of the Bhagavad Gītā has allowed all those with a lively interest in this spiritual classic to come into direct contact with the richness and resonance of the original text. Winthrop Sargeant's interlinear edition provides a word-for-word English translation along with the devanagari characters and the transliterated Sanskrit. Detailed grammatical commentary and page-by-page vocabularies are included, and a complete translation of each section is printed at the bottom of each page, allowing readers to turn the pages and appreciate the work in Sargeant's translation as well. Discussions of the language and setting of the Gītā are provided and, in this new edition, editor Christopher Key Chapple offers guidance on how to get the most out of this interlinear edition. Long a favorite of spiritual seekers and scholars, teachers and students, and lovers of world literature, Sargeant's edition endures as a great resource for twenty-first-century readers.

Celebrates and instructs in the healing power of breath.Faced with unrelenting stresses from daily news, relationships, health, and financial conditions, and unsatisfied with the temporary and side-effect-riddled relief that pharmaceuticals provide, millions are finding measures of peace and positive energy through mindful breathing practices. In this book, Stanislav Grof, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Sharon G. Mijares, Sonia Gilbert, Sheldon Kramer, Ilse Middendorf, Michael Sky, Puran Bair, and other well-known experts and international workshop leaders take up a wide range of Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern breathing practices, describing the historical development of these techniques and philosophies, and providing examples of modern practices, stories of healing, and specific exercises for application.

Treasury of letters written by African American women to Michelle Obama.Winner of the 2009 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Award, in the category of edited volume, presented by the Association of Black Women Historians"You are me. When I look at you, I see me. I see the young African American woman who, through good family values, strong roots, hard work, and perseverance, has come into her own … Though your journey may not be easy in the coming days, weeks, months, or years, think of us to ease your burden and pain. Think of those who you inspire. Think of those who you have given hope to. Think of those whom you have filled with pride. Think of your sister … Think of your favorite cousin. Think of your mother. Think of me. We are the same.""To you Michelle I take off my African woman hat from Cameroon, my motherland. You have given us African women the courage and the hope to move on and up. You keep your head high and hold your husband close to your heart. Keep praying my sister, you are the best. You have lived the dream of every ebony woman. Ride on sister, we are with you.""You are the song, you are the proverb, and you are the symbol of human dignity.""When you and your family go to the spot under the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, where Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, you will take with you our history of dreams deferred; however, you will also take with you our prayers and hopes for an America that is ready to build and dream anew.""Thank you for your courage to say yes, to step from behind your private veil into the public eye, to step forward with the grace of boldness, to carry a message that 'Hope is a wise decision' and also teaching the importance of learning to prepare oneself because with hope, things can change. I sat next to my daughter, praying that all women would tell this message to themselves, their daughters and sisters, nieces and neighbors, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, friends and sisterfriends, strangers and mates. But most of all, I thank you from the bottom of my heart to remind me to keep being hopeful so I can keep flapping my wings and not be afraid to fly.""What I really want to say is thank you for existing and remaining visually the kind of woman I've always wanted to be. I'd given up hope. I'd given up hope that Black men could affectionately and passionately adore a woman publicly the way that your old man adores you. I'd given up hope that I'd get to keep my booty and succeed in the commercial production world of NYC. I honestly didn't believe I'd be able to be intelligent and sexy at the same time and be taken seriously … You two have revolutionized what I believe to be possible in Black life. Black, young, sexy, beautiful, brilliant, and powerful. How marvelous.""We are one woman, blessed to be born Black in America … I rejoice for every little girl, every teenager, young adult and yes even every senior, who like me, can look at you and see herself. I rejoice for the mothers who loved their children as much as you and I do, yet could not protect them.""Thank you for making me reconsider bringing my Black babies into this world."Passionate, shattering, and tender, this astonishing book gathers together letters to Michelle Obama, written by African American and African women. Shortly after the election, the Uncrowned Queens Institute in Buffalo, New York, sent out a call across the country for African American women to share their hopes, fears, and advice with the new First Lady. Hundreds of letters and poems poured in, signaling both an unprecedented moment in our nation's history and a remarkable opportunity for African American women to look at the White House and see and speak to one of their own there.These very personal letters and poems, written by African American women from all ages and walks of life, celebrate a newfound hope for our world and children, speak to a strong sisterhood with the First Lady, confess often very private fears and dreams, and acknowledge and remember the generations before who endured so much for so long.

The definitive oral history of the Woodstock rock festival."The definitive study of the mega-concert."-Rolling Stone"Woodstock comes alive here, even if the music itself seems almost incidental to the backstage dramas." Publishers WeeklyWoodstock: the Oral History is the definitive, electrifying account of the rock festival that shook the world and defined a generation.In 1969 four young men had a dream: to produce the greatest rock concert ever held. Little did the group-two budding entrepreneurs who really wanted to write sitcoms, a former head shop proprietor turned rock band manager, and a record company executive who smoked hash in his office-know how enormous a reality their dream would become.Woodstock: The Oral History is the fascinating story of how it all came together-and almost fell apart-told exclusively in the voices of the men and women who made it happen. It's the adventures of a ragtag bunch of businessmen and bohemians, of hippies, hucksters, handymen, and hangers-on, working against all odds to unite a generation for one wild, glorious weekend in August 1969. These pages are replete with vibrantly expressive stories and voices, featuring a wonderfully eccentric cast of characters, from producers and performers, doctors and cops, to journalists, filmmakers, electricians, neighbors-and, of course, thousands of blessed out, rain-soaked flower children. You'll get behind-the-scenes stories from such people as David Crosby, Abbie Hoffman, Miriam Yasgur (who, along with her husband, Max, owned the land on which the festival was held), Richie Havens, Wavy Gravy, Paul Kantner, Chip Monck, and a host of others.Woodstock: The Oral History is the one truly authoritative volume-the definitive oral history of this momentous event. This special 40th anniversary edition features a new introduction by Michael Lang, one of the original producers of Woodstock, as well as updated information on the people who made the music festival happen.

A provocative tale of an unlikely contender and her midlife transformation through boxing."I peered through the Venetian blinds in our den, with its view of the playground next door, and watched mournfully as the popular girls played softball. I wanted to run fast, hit hard, and wear a cute uniform. These girls seemed to know something about life that I didn't."When Binnie Klein took up boxing in her midfifties, the reaction from friends and acquaintances was always the same: "You?" Why, after all, would a middle-aged Jewish psychotherapist with no previous history of athletics take up boxing? In Blows to the Head, Klein offers a provocative tale of an unlikely contender whose unexpected fascination with boxing takes her beyond the ring and leads her back to her roots and to a surprising chapter of the Jewish immigrant experience. With candor and wit, she reveals a series of memories and insights that would never have been possible if she hadn't been drawn toward a pair of boxing gloves during a physical therapy session. In a story that will captivate and inspire women and men, athletes and nonathletes, Klein shows us that if we turn over the "weird stones" on our path, the ones we usually ignore, we may find ourselves on an unexpected journey that will summon vitality back into our lives.

A brutal and unflinchingly honest portrayal of the effects of concentration camp life on the human psyche.Brutally and unflinchingly honest in its depiction of the effects of concentration camp life on the human psyche, Mieczysław Lurczyński's The Old Guard is one of the earliest works of Holocaust literature and one of the few works written by a non-Jew who was also a survivor of the camps. Begun during his imprisonment on fragments and scraps of paper and completed immediately after the war, in 1945, the play is based on Lurczyński's experiences in Buchenwald and its subcamp in Eschenhausen, SS-kommando Hecht. The action takes place in the Block Elder's room at Hecht, where the prisoners who hold privileged positions in the camp-old-timers from Auschwitz, Majdanek, and other camps-play cards, drink moonshine, and steal from one another. The play's hero, based on the pre-war Polish actor Fryderyk Jarosy, who was also interned at Hecht, attempts to uphold the values of Western civilization in this depraved environment, an impossible task that ultimately leads to his death at the hands of the Camp Elder. As Lurczysnki writes in his preface, the play contains no great atrocities: "The focus, rather, is on internal experiences and on depicting pained, sick, desparate, and resigned psyches, on depicting the methods by which people were turned into beasts, and beasts into freaks of nature." Available for the first time in English, The Old Guard is an important and compelling work of Holocaust literature that stands on a par with the work of Tadeusz Borowski and Primo Levi.

Interviews with eighteen Jewish "hidden children" of France and Belgium, telling the story of their survival during World War II.The history of France's "hidden children" and of the French citizens who saved six out of seven Jewish children and three-fourths of the Jewish adult population from deportation during the Nazi occupation is little known to American readers. In The Hidden Children of France, Danielle Bailly (a hidden child herself whose family travelled all over rural France before sending her to live with strangers who could protect her) reveals the stories behind the statistics of those who were saved by the extraordinary acts of ordinary people. Eighteen former "hidden children" describe their lives before, during, and after the war, recounting their incredible journeys and expressing their deepest gratitude to those who put themselves at risk to save others.

New, superbly translated omnibus of five of Jules Verne's most renown stories."One of the best storytellers who ever lived."—Arthur C. ClarkeIn one dazzling decade, French novelist Jules Verne took readers places they'd never gone before...the age of dinosaurs...the undersea realm of Atlantis...the craters and crevices of the moon...and a whirlwind aerial tour of the planet earth!Though he penned his unforgettable yarns in French, Verne plunked big parts of them down in America. And he himself possessed an American sassiness, nerve, and sense of humor, so Americans have returned the compliment: we've released dozens of Hollywood films based on his astonishing tales, and we've created the U.S.S. Nautilus, the NASA space missions, and other technological triumphs that have turned Verne's visions into practical reality.Here are Jules Verne's best-loved novels in one convenient omnibus volume, but with a huge difference. This book features new, accurate, accessible, and unabridged translations of these five visionary classics, translations that are complete down to the smallest substantive detail, that showcase Verne's farseeing science with unprecedented clarity and accuracy, capture the wit, prankishness, and showbiz flamboyance of one of literature's leading humorists and satirists. This is a Verne almost completely unknown to Americans...yet a Verne who has an uncannily American mindset!So these heroes and happenings are part of our heritage: Phileas Fogg chugging across the wild, wild west...the impossible underground journey of Professor Lidenbrock... the deep-sea exploits of secretive Captain Nemo...and a moon shot so realistic, it inspired U.S. astronaut Frank Borman a full century later.Jules Verne was a science buff with a showbiz background, and finally these classic storiess have a translator with the same orientation: Frederick Paul Walter is one of America's foremost Verne scholars... But he's also a scriptwriter, broadcaster, and part-time fossil hunter!Enriched with dozens of classic illustrations, The Amazing Journeys of Jules Verne will be a family favorite in every home library.Jules Verne was born in 1828 into a French lawyering family in the Atlantic coastal city of Nantes. Though his father sent him off to a Paris law school, young Jules had been writing on the side since his early teens, and his pet topics were the theater, travel, and science. Predictably enough, his legal studies led nowhere, so Verne took a day job with a stock brokerage, in his off hours penning scripts for farces and musical comedies while also publishing short stories and novelettes of scientific exploration and adventure.His big breakthrough came when he combined his theatrical knack with his scientific bent and in 1863 published an African adventure yarn, Five Weeks in a Balloon. After that and till his death in 1905, Jules Verne was one of the planet's best-loved and best-selling novelists, publishing over sixty books. In addition to the five visionary classics in this volume, other imaginative favorites by him include The Mysterious Island, Hector Servadac, the Begum's Millions, Master of the World, and The Meteor Hunt. Verne ranks among the five most translated authors in history, along with Mark Twain and the Bible.Frederick Paul Walter is a scriptwriter, broadcaster, librarian, and amateur paleontologist. A Trustee of the North American Jules Verne Society, he served as its Vice President from 2000 to 20008. Walter has produced many media programs, articles, reviews, and papers on aspects of Jules Verne and has collaborated on translations and scholarly editions of three Verne novels: The Meteor Hunt, The Mighty Orinoco, and a special edition of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas for the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis. Known to friends as Rick Walter, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

—Pointed, absorbing novel about an indigenous artist's long journey of creativity and coming-of-awareness from White Earth Reservation to ParisWinner of the 2011 American Book Award presented by the Before Columbus Foundation Shrouds of White Earth, an innovative novel about a contemporary Native American Indian artist illuminates, infuriates, and enchants. Dogroy Beaulieu, who reveals his marvelous story to a native writer, is a painter by nature, an intuitive visionary artist. He creates shrouds of sacrificed and crucified animals and birds, the faint traces of natural motion on linen, at his studio on the White Earth Nation in Minnesota. The very sight of the shrouds torments the traditional fascists on the reservation, and the faint traces of native totems haunt the patrons of galleries and curators of museums. "I create traces of totemic creatures, paint visionary characters in magical flight, native scenes in the bright colors of survivance," declares Dogroy. His artistic sentiments and shamanic tribute to the shrouds, however, do not protect him from his envious enemies on the reservation. Dogroy is banished by casino politicians, in flagrant violation of the new Constitution of the White Earth Nation for his artistic tease, his baroque mockery, and his ironic portrayals. This unforgettable journey of discovery and creativity ranks as one of the finest stories from the pen of the irresistibly witty and insightful Gerald Vizenor.

—Pointed, absorbing novel about an indigenous artist's long journey of creativity and coming-of-awareness from White Earth Reservation to ParisWinner of the 2011 American Book Award presented by the Before Columbus Foundation Shrouds of White Earth, an innovative novel about a contemporary Native American Indian artist illuminates, infuriates, and enchants. Dogroy Beaulieu, who reveals his marvelous story to a native writer, is a painter by nature, an intuitive visionary artist. He creates shrouds of sacrificed and crucified animals and birds, the faint traces of natural motion on linen, at his studio on the White Earth Nation in Minnesota. The very sight of the shrouds torments the traditional fascists on the reservation, and the faint traces of native totems haunt the patrons of galleries and curators of museums. "I create traces of totemic creatures, paint visionary characters in magical flight, native scenes in the bright colors of survivance," declares Dogroy. His artistic sentiments and shamanic tribute to the shrouds, however, do not protect him from his envious enemies on the reservation. Dogroy is banished by casino politicians, in flagrant violation of the new Constitution of the White Earth Nation for his artistic tease, his baroque mockery, and his ironic portrayals. This unforgettable journey of discovery and creativity ranks as one of the finest stories from the pen of the irresistibly witty and insightful Gerald Vizenor.

Combining the analytical tools of cinema studies with insights from clinical practice focused on eating disorders, Body Shots offers a compelling case for widespread media literacy to combat the effects of the "eating disordered culture" represented in Hollywood productions and popular images of celebrity life.How do movie star bodies and celebrity culture influence the way real girls and women feel about their own size and shape? What effect can popular films have on everyday eating behavior and exercise rituals? Body Shots shows how Hollywood films, movie stars, and celebrity media help propagate the values of an "eating disordered culture" that promotes constant self-scrutiny and vigilance, denial of appetite and overcontrol of weight in the compulsive pursuit of an eternally elusive body ideal of slenderness and fitness. In a unique approach that merges the disciplines of film analysis, gender studies, and psychology, clinical psychologist and cinema studies scholar Emily Fox-Kales demonstrates how the body narratives of such Hollywood celebrities as Lindsay Lohan, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Oprah Winfrey and their battles with bulimia, post-maternal weight gain, and yo-yo dieting not only serve as public enactments of the same eating and weight struggles their fans endure, but create a "new normal" which naturalizes and even valorizes the chronic body dissatisfaction and weight obsession that are established risk factors for eating disorders in women and girls. Written for students of cultural and gender studies, parents, media literacy educators, as well as film buffs everywhere, this book aims to provide the moviegoer with the critical tools necessary to develop a resistant gaze at Hollywood productions and make healthier choices among the many viewing screens of our super-mediated world.

A new translation of a modern Yiddish masterpiece.Since its original publication in 1935, Ordinary Jews has come to be regarded as one of the masterpieces of Yiddish literature. In his portrayal of the lives of ordinary Polish Jews in a small provincial city at the end of the nineteenth century, Yehoshuah Perle offers a glimpse at a way of life that was already changing by the time of the novel's publication and would soon be brutally exterminated in the Holocaust. Through the eyes of the novel's young protagonist, Mendl Shonash, we are introduced to an intricate society of housewives, beggars, tailors, doctors, maidservants, tavern keepers, teachers, gravediggers, rabbinical students, and a whole range of people living close to the bottom of the social scale, as well as the various social hierarchies, shady dealings, pretensions, grotesqueries, and superstitions that color and order their world. Like a star whose light is visible to us light years after its creation, Ordinary Jews provides a glimpse into a particular culture and unique way of life that might otherwise be lost to history.

A biography of one of America's neglected grand masters.A Sicilian immigrant who trained at the Art Students League in New York, Jon Corbino (1905–1964) was one of the most influential members of the "Sarasota School" of art, a group of painters and artists, many of them expatriate New Yorkers, who came to the west coast of Florida for its natural beauty, the quality of its light, and the open-aired freedom to explore their art. He began his career by chronicling the lives and struggles of his fellow immigrants, and by the 1930s he was being hailed in newspapers as "the founder of the school of Baroque-Romanticism in America." In 1938, Life Magazine called him "the Rubens of New England," and his work sold to the most prestigious museums, including the Metropolitan, the Whitney, and the Carnegie. In 1956, he shared the stage with Edward Hopper in a two-man exhibition sponsored by the Rehn Gallery of New York.Strong-willed and temperamental, Corbino was also beset by personal demons, and today his paintings, once so much a part of American culture, are remembered primarily by students of American art and a select group of collectors who are moved by the power of his work. Drawing on unprecedented access to the artist's archives, letters, and family records, as well as interviews with some of his contemporaries, Janis and Richard Londraville tell the story of a gifted and talented Italian American artist who, despite a career filled with awards and acclaim, nevertheless struggled against personal demons and ethnic prejudice, and who, as a realist/romantic painter, felt pushed aside by the march of Abstract Expressionism and the many other "isms" of twentieth-century American art. As Karal Ann Marling argues in her introduction, "the trajectory of the process whereby Giovanni Corbino became Jon Corbino, then CORBINO, and finally Jon Corbino again, illuminates a whole, neglected chapter in the twentieth-century struggle to define what American art ought to be."

An engaging and accessible introduction to the natural world in New England and upstate New York.Through his popular newspaper column, "Speaking of Nature," and his 2001 book of the same title, professional naturalist Bill Danielson has introduced thousands of readers to the wonders and mystery of the natural world in New England and upstate New York. In Still Speaking of Nature, Danielson continues his observations of the nature, following the rhythm of the seasons in twenty-eight short essays that explore a diverse range of topics, from trilliums and katydids to meadow voles and moose. Taken together, they offer an engaging and accessible introduction to a fascinating world of nature that is often no farther away than our own backyards or neighborhood parks. "You cannot care for something you don't know about," Danielson writes, and whether you're a layperson or an experienced naturalist, his entertaining combination of science and humor will inspire you to explore the natural world and your place in it.

A vivid portrayal of the important role of Jews in American boxing history, and vice versa.Boxing was an integral part of American culture during the first half of the twentieth century, second only to baseball in popularity. It was also a heavily Jewish sport-from 1910 to 1940, there were twenty-six Jewish world-champions, and during the 1920s and 1930s, almost one-third of all boxers were Jewish. Drawing on numerous interviews and first-person accounts of the boxers themselves, Allen Bodner offers a vivid portrayal of the important role of Jews in American boxing history, and vice versa. When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport is a must-read for fans of the sweet science, as well as anyone interested in the Jewish American and immigrant experience more generally.

A study of the times and life in Southampton, New York between 1870 and 1900.This book concerns the emergence and impact of the summer colony in the village of Southampton, New York, between the years 1870 and 1900, particularly the often fraught relations between the area's wealthy resort population and its year-round residents. Essentially a study in social change and conflict, the book revolves around a number of key issues that preoccupied inhabitants and summer residents alike and were the subject of great controversy at the time, including beach rights, oyster farming in Mecox Bay, and the loss of the Shinnecock Hills, first by the Native American inhabitants and then by the town itself to outside developers. Due consideration is given to those individuals who played major roles in these disputes. The book also explores salient and significant aspects of Southampton's early history insofar as they relate to the period in question.

An American adventure in the Antonioni vein—visually rich and emotionally mysterious.Part Mafia murder mystery, part novel of ideas, but most of all a love story, The Sadness of Antonioni follows Hank Morelli, a young assistant professor of film who is obsessed with Antonioni's L'Avventura. As he embarks on an unlikely romance with a Wendy's cashier, he is also drawn into the mystery of his grandfather's underworld connections and tempted by his department chair and his department chair's mysterious girlfriend, Nadia, to take part in a monstrous film project they are planning. Haunted throughout by the terror of time's raw present without exit, The Sadness of Antonioni is an American adventure in the Antonioni vein-visually rich and emotionally mysterious-in which an unlikely young couple navigates the difficult waters of their relationship, each suffering the remnants of a violent past that must be resolved if they hope to stay together. Heartrending and unsparing, yet with a persistent comic vein, this is Frank Lentricchia's seventh and most ambitious and disturbing novel to date.