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Democracy matters : winning the fight against imperialism
Cornel West.
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229 p. ; 24 cm.
In a sequel to his Race Matters, which he wrote over a decade ago, West (religion, Princeton U.) looks at the waning of democratic energies and practices in the present age of the American empire. He describes a deeply troubling deterioration of democratic powers in the US, and the rise of an ugly imperialism aided by an unholy alliance of the plutocratic elites and the Christian Right, and by a massive disaffection of voters who see too little difference between two corrupted parties. Americans must dip deep into the often-untapped wells of their democratic traditions to fight the imperialist strain and plutocratic impulse, he says. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Descent into chaos : the U.S. and the disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
Ahmed Rashid.
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498 p. : maps ; 22 cm.
After September 11th , Ahmed Rashid's crucial book Taliban introduced American readers to that now notorious regime. In this new work, he returns to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia to review the catastrophic aftermath of America's failed war on terror. Called "Pakistan's best and bravest reporter" by Christopher Hitchens, Rashid has shown himself to be a voice of reason amid the chaos of present-day Central Asia. Descent Into Chaos is his blistering critique of American policy-a dire warning and an impassioned call to correct these disasterous strategies before these failing states threaten global stability and bring devastation to our world.
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Desperate characters
Paula Fox ; introduction by Jonathan Franzen.
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xiv, 156 p. ; 22 cm.
First published in 1970 to great acclaim, this novel stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature--a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd" and "The Great Gatsby".
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The dew breaker
Edwidge Danticat.
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244 p. ; 22 cm.
From the universally acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!, a brilliant, deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a "dew breaker"--a torturer--a man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality. We meet him late in his life. He is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hardworking barber, a kindly landlord to the men who live in a basement apartment in his home. He is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, recognizable by the terrifying scar on his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him: his devoted wife and rebellious daughter; his sometimes unsuspecting, sometimes apprehensive neighbors, tenants, and clients. And we meet some of his victims. In the book's powerful denouement, we return to the Haiti of the dew breaker's past, to his last, desperate act of violence, and to his first encounter with the woman who will offer him a form of redemption--albeit imperfect--that will change him forever. The Dew Breaker is a book of interconnected lives--a book of love, remorse, and hope; of rebellions both personal and political; of the compromises we often make in order to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. Unforgettable, deeply resonant, The Dew Breaker proves once more that in Edwidge Danticat we have a major American writer.
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Disintegration : the splintering of Black America
Eugene Robinson.
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xi, 254 p. ; 22 cm.
Explains how years of desegregation and affirmative action have led to the revelation of four distinct African American groups who reflect unique political views and circumstances, in a report that also illuminates crucial modern debates on race and class.
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Dog on it : a Chet and Bernie mystery
Spencer Quinn.
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305 p. ; 23 cm.
In this irresistible new detective series featuring a canine narrator, Quinn speaks two languages--suspense and dog--fluently. Sometimes funny, sometimes touching, and in a few places terrifying . . . [a] one-of-a-kind novel (Stephen King).
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The double bind : a novel
Chris Bohjalian.
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368 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
Throughout his career, Chris Bohjalian has earned a reputation for writing novels that examine some of the most important issues of our time. WithMidwives, he explored the literal and metaphoric place of birth in our culture. InThe Buffalo Soldier, he introduced us to one of contemporary literature's most beloved foster children. And inBefore You Know Kindness, he plumbed animal rights, gun control, and what it means to be a parent. Chris Bohjalian's riveting fiction keeps us awake deep into the night. AsThe New York Timeshas said, "Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian's grace and power." Now he is back with an ambitious new novel that travels between Jay Gatsby's Long Island and rural New England, between the Roaring Twenties and the twenty-first century. When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont's back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography and begins to work at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won't let anyone see. When Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel discovers that he was telling the truth: before he was homeless, Bobbie Crocker was a successful photographer who had indeed worked with such legends as Chuck Berry, Robert Frost, and Eartha Kitt. As Laurel's fascination with Bobbie's former life begins to merge into obsession, she becomes convinced that some of his photographs reveal a deeply hidden, dark family secret. Her search for the truth will lead her further from her old life--and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her. In this spellbinding literary thriller, rich with complex and compelling characters--including Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan--Chris Bohjalian takes readers on his most intriguing, most haunting, and most unforgettable journey yet. From the Hardcover edition.
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A dream in polar fog
by Yuri Rytkheu ; translated from the Russian by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse.
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336 p. ; 20 cm.
A Dream in Polar Fog is at once a cross-cultural journey, an ethnographic fable and chronicle of the Chukchi people and a breathtaking adventure story. It is the story of John MacLellan, a young Canadian sailor who is left behind by his ship, stranded among the native people of the arctic coast. It is the story of one Chukchi community that adopts a crippled stranger and teaches him to live as a "true human being." During the long winter, John comes to know his new companions-first as untutored primitives, then in the romantic light of noble savages and finally as a real people who share the best and worst of human traits with his own kind. Tragedy strikes, and a life is lost and re-given; a man rises to take the place of a boy; wounds are healed with compassion, honesty and love. And when difficult times loom ahead, it is his new family that John will fight to preserve. Rytkheu's empathetic voice guides us across the magnificent landscape of the North and reveals all the complexity and beauty of a vanishing world. Born in Uelen, a village in the Chukotka region, Yuri Rytkheu has sailed the Bering Sea, worked on Arctic geological expeditions and hunted whale in arctic waters, in addition to authoring over 10 novels and collections of stories. In the 1950s, Rytkheu emerged as not only a writer of considerable literary talent, but as the unique voice of a small national minority-the Chukchi people. His novels and short stories about Chukotka and the Chukchi introduced generations of readers to the history and mythology of those who call one of the most majestic and inhospitable environments on earth their home. Bestsellers in Germany and Switzerland, Rytkheu's works are also well-loved in Japan, Denmark and France.
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Dreams from my father : a story of race and inheritance
Barack Obama.
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xvii, 453 p. ; 21 cm.
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father, a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man, has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey, first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.
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Dress your family in corduroy and denim
David Sedaris.
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257 p. ; 22 cm.
David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn't it? In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives -- a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.
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Driftless
David Rhodes.
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429 p. ; 23 cm.
David Rhodes's long-awaited new novel turns an unblinking eye on an array of eccentric characters and situations. The setting is Words, Wisconsin, an anonymous town of only a few hundred people. But under its sleepy surface, life rages. Cora and Graham guard their dairy farm, and family, from the wicked schemes of their milk co-op. Lifelong paraplegic Olivia suddenly starts to walk, only to find herself crippled by her fury toward her sister and caretaker, Violet. Recently retired Rusty finds a cougar living in his haymow, dredging up haunting childhood memories. Winifred becomes pastor of the Friends church and stumbles on enlightenment in a very unlikely place. And Julia Montgomery, both private and gregarious, instigates a series of events that threatens the town's solitude and doggedly suspicious ways. Driftless finds the author's powers undiminished in this unforgettable story that evokes a small-town America previously unmapped, and the damaged denizens who must make their way through it.
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Dropped from heaven
Sophie Judah.
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x, 243 p. ; 22 cm.
A marvelous fiction debut-a collection of richly told, deeply moving stories about everyday life within a community of Indian Jews as its ancient culture confronts the modern world. In the mythical village of Jwalanagar, the Jewish traditions of the Bene Israel have survived for more than two thousand years, but the twentieth century brings with it modernity and cataclysmic political change. In these nineteen interconnected stories-by turns insightful, humorous, and heartbreaking; poignant, gentle, and searingly sad-we follow this community across the years as its way of life is forever altered. In "Hannah and Benjamin," the parents of a young woman are shocked when she defies their rejection of the man she wishes to marry-but no more shocked than the man himself. In "Nathoo," a kindly Jewish soldier and his wife adopt a Hindu boy orphaned in the post-independence violence of 1947-with disastrous results. In "Dropped from Heaven," a mother with three unmarried daughters at home and a copy of Pride and Prejudice in her handbag springs into action when she hears that two single brothers are coming to town looking for brides. And in "Old Man Moses," a lonely and imperious old man is visited by his Israeli grandson and the young man's girlfriend, and finds that there is still a place in his heart for love. Sophie Judah tells these stories in a wonderfully fresh and original voice, and gives us a fascinating look at an ancient, vibrant community that now exists only in memory.
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