Saturday, January 30, 2010

The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective

The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective

The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective

Focusing on the twentieth century, this collection of essays by leading international experts offers an up-to-date, comprehensive history and analysis of multiple cases of genocide and genocidal acts. The book contains studies of the Armenian genocide; the victims of Stalinist terror; the Holocaust; and Imperial Japan. Contributors explore colonialism and address the fate of the indigenous peoples in Africa, North America, and Australia. In addition, extensive coverage of the post-1945 period includes the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, Bali, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Guatemala. Robert Gellately is Professor and Strassler Family Chair for the Study of Holocaust History at Clark University, where he teaches a variety of courses in modern German history, modern European history and the history of the Holocaust with a concentration on the study of Nazi Germany and the Gestapo. In Backing Hitler (Oxford, 2001), Gellately uses new evidence to demolish long-held beliefs about what ordinary Germans knew of the concentration camps. His internationally acclaimed book, The Gestapo and German Society (Oxford, 1990) challenges conventional concepts of the Gestapo and daily life in Nazi Germany. He has won numerous fellowships, and awards, most recently from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. Ben Kiernan is A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and Convenor of the Yale East Timor Project. Kiernan is the author of The Pol Pot Regime (Yale, 1996), How Pol Pot Came to Power (Verso Books, 1985) and three other works and over a hundred scholarly articles on Southeast Asia and the history of genocide. Choice called him "the most knowledgeable observer of Cambodia anywhere in the Western world." Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge "indicted" and then "sentenced" him as an "arch war criminal." Kiernan is a member of the Editorial Boards of Human Rights Review, the Journal of Human Rights, and the Journal of Genocide Research. He is currently writing a global history of genocide since 1500.

ISBN: 0521527503
Author: Robert Gellately
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Rating: 3.63

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Tuesday, May 8, 2007

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

From the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author of Woman, a playful, passionate guide to the science all around us

With the singular intelligence and exuberance that made Woman an international sensation, Natalie Angier takes us on a whirligig tour of the scientific canon. She draws on conversations with hundreds of the world's top scientists and on her own work as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the New York Times to create a thoroughly entertaining guide to scientific literacy. Angier's gifts are on full display in The Canon, an ebullient celebration of science that stands to become a classic.

The Canon is vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time -- from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it's for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or what electricity is. Angier's sparkling prose and memorable metaphors bring the science to life, reigniting our own childhood delight in discovering how the world works. "Of course you should know about science," writes Angier, "for the same reason Dr. Seuss counsels his readers to sing with a Ying or play Ring the Gack: These things are fun and fun is good."

The Canon is a joyride through the major scientific disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. Along the way, we learn what is actually happening when our ice cream melts or our coffee gets cold, what our liver cells do when we eat a caramel, why the horse is an example of evolution at work, and how we're all really made of stardust. It's Lewis Carroll meets Lewis Thomas -- a book that will enrapture, inspire, and enlighten.

ISBN: 0618242953
Author: Natalie Angier
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Rating: 3.66

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Tuesday, May 1, 2007

The Wind from the East: A Novel

The Wind from the East: A Novel

The Wind from the East: A Novel

Internationally celebrated author Almudena Grandes has produced her finest work yet with The Wind from the East, a blend of two narratives set alternately in Madrid and an Andalusian town by the sea. Sara Gómes Morales,given up at birth to be raised by her wealthy godmother,is betrayed on her sixteenth birthday when she is forced to leave her godmother’s home and return to live in poverty with her estranged parents. Tortured by resentment and the loneliness of belonging to neither place,she finds solace as an adult only when she moves to the coastal town.
Parallel to Sara’s story is the story of Juan and Damian Olmedo, brothers in love with the same woman. One night an argument incited by jealousy leads Damian to stumble down a flight ofstairs and fall to his death. Suspected ofmurdering his younger brother, Juan flees to the same village that served as Sara’s escape. Deftly engaging, The Wind from the Eastis an epic tale of love and redemption. Almudena Grandes' writing has been compared to the work of classic and contemporary voices such as the Brontë sisters and Isabel Allende.

ISBN: 1583227466
Author: Almudena Grandes
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Rating: 3.87

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The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

A playful, passionate, ebullient guide to the science all around us by a Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author.

Buckle up for a joy ride through physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. Drawing on conversations with hundreds of the world's top scientists and her own work as an award-winning science writer, Natalie Angier does the impossible: She makes science fascinating and seriously fun, even for those of us who, in Angier's words, "still can't tell the difference between a proton, a photon, and a moron."

Most of the profound questions we will explore in our lives—evolution, global warming, stem cells—have to do with science. So do a lot of everyday things, like our ice cream melting and our coffee getting cold and our vacuum cleaner running (or not). What does our liver do when we eat a caramel? How does the horse demonstrate evolution at work? Are we really made of stardust? (Yes, we are.)

In The Canon, Lewis Thomas meets Lewis Carroll in a book destined to become a modern classic—because it quenches our curiosity, sparks our interest in the world around us, reignites our childhood delight in discovering how things work, and instantly makes us smarter.

ISBN: 1598870890
Author: Natalie Angier
Publisher: HighBridge Company
Rating: 3.66

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Sunday, April 1, 2007

Better Off Than You Think: God s Astounding Opinion of You

Better Off Than You Think: God s Astounding Opinion of You

Better Off Than You Think: God s Astounding Opinion of You

Ralph Harris takes a refreshing look at God's opinion of you. He teaches you how to receive an accurate estimate of yourself from God instead of trying to drum up a healthy self-esteem in your own strength. Once you start believing the truth about yourself from God's perspective, your life will be transformed. It will free you to be truly alive and go forward with confidence and faith. Ralph shows you how you truly are much better off than you think.

ISBN: 1928915957
Author: Ralph Harris
Publisher: Evangel Publishing House
Rating: 4.60

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Monday, March 26, 2007

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

The American Gospel–literally, the good news about America–is that religion shapes our public life without controlling it. In this vivid book, New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham tells the human story of how the Founding Fathers viewed faith, and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice.

At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics–from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.

Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a “wall of separation between church and state,” while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called “public religion,” a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well.

Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nation’s best chance of summoning what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward.

“In his American Gospel, Jon Meacham provides a refreshingly clear, balanced, and wise historical portrait of religion and American politics at exactly the moment when such fairness and understanding are much needed. Anyone who doubts the relevance of history to our own time has only to read this exceptional book.”–David McCullough, author of 1776

“Jon Meacham has given us an insightful and eloquent account of the spiritual foundation of the early days of the American republic. It is especially instructive reading at a time when the nation is at once engaged in and deeply divided on the question of religion and its place in public life.”–Tom Broka

ISBN: 0812976665
Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Random House Trade
Rating: 3.71

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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Voices of Hitler s Jewish Soldiers

Voices of Hitler s Jewish Soldiers

Voices of Hitler s Jewish Soldiers

ISBN: 0300109024
Author: Bryan Mark Rigg
Publisher: Yale University Press
Rating: 0.00

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