Search results for ""basic books""

First published in 1999, Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks and the coffee crisis of the 21st century. Mark Pendergrast uses coffee production, trade, and consumption as a window through which to view broad historical themes: the clash and blending of cultures, slavery, the rise of brand marketing, global inequities, fair trade, revolutions, health scares, environmental issues, and the rediscovery of quality.As the scope of coffee culture continues to expand,Uncommon Grounds remains more than ever a brilliantly entertaining guide to one of the world's favorite drinks.

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In Nice White Ladies, race and gender professor Jessie Daniels looks beyond the "Karens" and the pussy hats, to offer an illuminating look at how white women participate in, benefit from, and--crucially--can combat racism.Chapter by chapter, Daniels looks at the most urgent examples of how white womanhood has been weaponized today, and then dives deeper into the history and the false narratives behind these events. She examines specific figures including Amy Cooper and the Central Park birdwatcher, and Linda Fairstein and the Central Park Five, but also looks at larger social shifts and the role white women have had in deepening existing inequalities. Seemingly empowering movements for white women have also harmed people of color, from a feminism that had pushed the voices of Brown and Black women aside, to an entire wellness industry that insulates white women in bubble of their own privilege. White women are often unwilling to examine the fact that their day to day choices, including selecting only the best schools and neighborhoods for their children, results in a hoarding of resources for white families and a return to segregation.In a nation deeply divided by race, Jessie Daniels boldly addresses white women's complicity in discrimination but also in their unique potential to resist and dismantle the white nationalism that threatens us all. The stakes are deeply personal for Daniels, as a white woman seeking to call in fellow white women, with an invitation to think together and act-rather than simply call out and criticize. By excavating her own life for examples of failing, learning, evolving, and changing course, Daniels provides a roadmap for other white women looking to make much needed change. Ultimately, she shows how white women can be more than allies, but trusted accomplices in a shared mission to secure equality for all.

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A historian of gender explores the complicated relationship between womanhood and motherhood In an era of falling births, it's often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others-the vast majority, then and now-who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone. ? Drawing on deep research and her own experience as a woman without children, historian Peggy O'Donnell shows that many of the reasons women are not having children today are ones they share with women in the past: a lack of support, their jobs or finances, environmental concerns, infertility, and the desire to live different kinds of lives. Understanding this history-how normal it has always been to not have children, and how hard society has worked to make it seem abnormal-is key, she writes, to rebuilding kinship between mothers and non-mothers, and to building a better world for us all.

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The Black Power movement, often associated with its iconic spokesmen, derived much of its energy from the work of people whose stories have never been told. Stayed on Freedom brings into focus two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom. Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South. Their commitment to each other and to social change took them on a decades-long journey that traversed first the country and then the world. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local and the global across organizations and generations. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, Stayed on Freedom is a moving and intimate portrait of two people trying to make a life while working to make a better world.

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With “groundbreaking research on the psychology of resilience” (Adam Grant), a top expert on human trauma argues that we vastly overestimate how common PTSD is and fail to recognize how resilient people really are In the days following 9/11, mental health professionals from all over the country flocked to New York to help handle what everyone assumed would be a flood of trauma cases. Oddly, the flood never came. In The End of Trauma, pioneering psychologist George A. Bonanno argues that most of what we think we understand about trauma is wrong. For starters, it’s not nearly as common as we think. In fact, people are overwhelmingly resilient to adversity. What we often interpret as PTSD are signs of a natural process of learning how to deal with a specific situation. We can cope far more effectively if we understand how this process works

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World War II sent the youth of the world across the globe in odd alliances against each other. Never before had a conflict been fought simultaneously in so many diverse landscapes on premises that often seemed unrelated. Never before had a conflict been fought in so many different ways - from rocket attacks on London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya. It was only in time that these battles coalesced into one war.In The Second World Wars, esteemed military historian Victor Davis Hanson examines how and why this happened, focusing in detail on how the war was fought in the air, at sea, and on land-and thus where, when, and why the Allies won. Throughout, Hanson also situates World War II squarely within the history of war in the West over the past 2,500 years. In profound ways, World War II was unique: the most lethal event in human history, with 50 million dead, the vast majority of them civilians. But, as Hanson demonstrates, the war's origins were not entirely novel; it was reformulations of ancient ideas of racial and cultural superiority that fueled the global bloodbath.

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Dogs are at once among the most ordinary of animals and the most beloved by mankind. But what we may not realize is that for as long as we have loved dogs, our poets have been seriously engaged with them.In this collection, English professor Duncan Wu digs into the wealth of poetry about our furry friends -- who have been domesticated longer than any other species -- to show not only how attitudes toward dogs have changed over the centuries, but how those changes have been refracted through the prism of literature. While it's natural for dog lovers to understand their canine companions as whimsical, and to sentimentalize them, the greatest poets have transcended that impulse, and written about dogs in a way that engages with the more serious aspects of their lives -- and ours.Dogs have, in short, insinuated themselves into nearly every facet of human thought. And to see them as anything less than of central significance in our cultural perceptions is to underestimate them. Rich and inviting, Dog-eared is a definitive, spellbinding collection of poetic musings about humans and dogs.

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Whether we are trying to impress a date after an art house film screening or discussing Oscar nominations among friends, we all need ways to look at and talk about movies. But with so much variety between an Alfred Hitchcock thriller and a Nora Ephron romantic comedy, how can everyday viewers determine what makes a good movie? In Talking Pictures, veteran film critic Ann Hornaday walks us through the production of a typical movie-from script and casting to final sound edit-and explains how to evaluate each piece of the process. How do we know if a film has been well-written, above and beyond snappy dialogue? What constitutes a great screen performance? What goes into praiseworthy cinematography, editing, and sound design? And what does a director really do? In a new epilogue, Hornaday addresses important questions of representation in film and the industry and how this can, and should, effect a movie-watching experience. Full of engaging anecdotes and interviews with actors and filmmakers, Talking Pictures will help us see movies in a whole new light-not just as fans, but as film critics in our own right.

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Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of social convention? In this brilliant and provocative classic, the distinguished feminist scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex and gender is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced. Drawing on illuminating real-life cases and a probing analysis of centuries of scientific research, Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how scientists have historically politicized the body. In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms -- sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed -- and asserts that intersex and other non-binary individuals should not be forced to fit flawed societal definitions of normality.Now with a new preface and final chapter considering the many scientific and political developments of the last two decades, Sexing the Body is an indispensable and revolutionary look at how biology, society, and history together determine sexual difference.

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The phrase "music history" likely summons up images of long-dead composers, smug men in wigs and waistcoats, and people dancing without touching. In Music: A Subversive History, Gioia responds to the false notions that undergird this tedium. Traditional histories of music, Gioia contents, downplay those elements of music that are considered disreputable or irrational-its deep connections to sexuality, magic, trance and alternative mind states, healing, social control, generational conflict, political unrest, even violence and murder. They suppress the stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. Here, Gioia attempts to reclaim music history for the riffraff, the insurgents, and provocateurs-the real drivers of change and innovation. In Music, Gioia tells the four-thousand-year history of music as a source of power, change, upheaval, and enchantment. He shows how social outcasts have repeatedly become the great trailblazers of musical expression: slaves and their descendants, for instance, have repeatedly reinvented music in America and elsewhere, from ragtime, blues, jazz, R&B, to bossa nova, soul, and hip hop. A revolutionary and revisionist account, Music: A Subversive History is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of music.

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There comes a time in every new mother's life when she finds herself staring at her screaming, smelly "bundle of joy" and wishing someone had told her that her house would reek of vomit, or that she shouldn't buy the cute onesies with a thousand impossible buttons, or that she might cry more than the baby.Best-selling author Dawn Dais, mother of two tiny terrors, is convinced that there is a reason for this lack of preparedness. She believes that a vast conspiracy exists to hide the horrific truth about parenting from doe-eyed expectant mothers who might otherwise abandon their babies in hospitals and run for it. Eschewing the adorableness that oozes out of other parenting books, Dais offers real advice from real moms-along with hilarious anecdotes, clever tips, and the genuine encouragement every mom needs in order to survive the first year of parenthood.Revised and updated with several new chapters, including new advice for single moms, tips on what to do when you inevitable mess up, and a reassuring update on Dais' own family (it really does get easier, it turns out). The Sh!t No One Tells You is a must-have companion for every new mother's sleepless nights and poop-filled days. In this new and revised edition, Dais brings her trademark brand of no-nonsense parenting advice up to the present.

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Written by two expert authors who have won millions of dollars in government and foundation grants, this is the essential book on securing grants. It provides comprehensive, step-by-step guide for grant writers, including vital up-to-the minute interviews with grant-makers, policy makers, and nonprofit leaders. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking grants in today's difficult economic climate.The Only Grant-Writing Book You'll Ever Need includes:Concrete suggestions for developing each section of a proposalHands-on exercises that let you practice what you learnA glossary of termsConversations with grant-makers on why they award grants...and why they don'tInsights into how grant-awarding is affected by shifts in the economy

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An “extraordinary…must-read” (Steven Levitsky, New York Times–bestselling coauthor of How Democracies Die) look at how support from foreign superpowers propped up—and pulled down—authoritarian regimes during the Cold War, offering lessons for today’s great power competition Throughout the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union competed to prop up friendly dictatorships abroad. Today, it is commonly assumed that this military aid enabled the survival of allied autocrats, from Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-shek to Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam.    In Up in Arms, political scientist Adam E. Casey rebuts the received wisdom: aid to autocracies often backfired during the Cold War. Casey draws on extensive original research to show that, despite billions poured into friendly regimes, US-backed dictators lasted in power no longer than those without outside help. In fact, America

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A?certified clinical sexologist’s?radically inclusive?guide to sex and dating Swipe. Match. Get ghosted. Repeat. Modern dating can quickly start to feel like an overwhelming slog. It’s easy to forget the point of it all: this is supposed to be fun. Enter professional sex and dating coach Myisha Battle. Drawing on an engaging and diverse collection of client stories, This Is Supposed to Be Fun is a uniquely inclusive, sex-positive guide to help you skip past the games and get what you really want out of dating and relationships—no matter what that may be. Whether you’re trying to create the perfectly imperfect dating profile, stay true to your authentic self on dates, match with people interested in kink, or break up with compassion, Battle’s friendly, proven advice is indispensable. This Is Supposed to Be Fun will help make the world of dating and relationships more enjoyable (and bearable!) for everyone.

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A "superb" and "ambitious" (New York Times) intellectual and political history of the last century of American conservatism When most people think of modern conservatism, they think of Ronald Reagan. Yet this narrow view leaves many to question: How did Donald Trump win the presidency? And what is the future of the Republican Party? In The Right, Matthew Continetti gives a sweeping account of movement conservatism's evolution, from the Progressive Era through the present. He tells the story of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, only to see their creation buckle under new pressures from national populist movements. Drawing out the tensions between the desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism's past, the more one becomes convinced of its future. Updated with a new epilogue, The Right is essential reading for anyone looking to understand American conservatism.

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We all know people who talk with their hands-but do they know what they're saying with them? Our gestures can reveal and contradict us, and express thoughts we may not even know we're thinking.In Thinking with Your Hands, esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias, or how the shape of a student's gestures can track their mastery of a new concept-even when they're still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child development milestones, to what's admissible in a court of law, to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation.Sweeping and ambitious, Thinking with Your Hands promises to transform the way we think about language and communication.

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In The Third Reconstruction, distinguished historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a powerful and personal new interpretation of recent history. The racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020, he argues, marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era. Joseph draws revealing connections and insights across centuries as he traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the failed assault on the Capitol.America's first and second Reconstructions fell tragically short of their grand aims. Our Third Reconstruction offers a new chance to achieve Black dignity and citizenship at last-an opportunity to choose hope over fear.

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The dramatic life of Vietnam War hero Roy Benavidez, revealing how Hispanic Americans have long shaped US history, from 'a major new voice [with] lyrical powers as a biographer” (David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass) In May 1968, while serving in Vietnam, Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez led the rescue of a reconnaissance team surrounded by hundreds of enemy soldiers. He saved the lives of at least eight of his comrades that day in a remarkable act of valor that left him permanently disabled. Awarded the Medal of Honor after a yearslong campaign, Benavidez became a highly sought-after public speaker, a living symbol of military heroism, and one of the country’s most prominent Latinos.   Now, historian William Sturkey tells Benavidez’s life story in full for the first time. Growing up in Jim Crow–era Texas, Benavidez was scorned as “Mexican” despite his family’s deep

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In this gripping narrative, John Koehler details the widespread activities of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or Stasi." The Stasi, which infiltrated every walk of East German life, suppressed political opposition, and caused the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, proved to be one of the most powerful secret police and espionage services in the world. Koehler methodically reviews the Stasi's activities within East Germany and overseas, including its programs for internal repression, international espionage, terrorism and terrorist training, art theft, and special operations in Latin America and Africa.Koehler was both Berlin bureau chief of the Associated Press during the height of the Cold War and a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His insider's account is based on primary sources, such as U.S. intelligence files, Stasi documents made available only to the author, and extensive interviews with victims of political oppression, former Stasi officers, and West German government officials. Drawing from these sources, Koehler recounts tales that rival the most outlandish Hollywood spy thriller and, at the same time, offers the definitive contribution to our understanding of this still largely unwritten aspect of the history of the Cold War and modern Germany.

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The definitive history of the Kerner Commission, whose report on urban unrest reshaped American debates about race and inequalityIn Separate and Unequal, historian Steven M. Gillon offers a revelatory new history of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders-popularly known as the Kerner Commission. Convened by President Lyndon Johnson after riots in Newark and Detroit left dozens dead and thousands injured, the commission issued a report in 1968 that attributed the unrest to "white racism" and called for aggressive new programs to end racism and poverty. "Our nation is moving toward two societies," they warned, "one black, and one white-separate and unequal."Johnson refused to accept the Kerner Report, and as his political coalition unraveled, its proposals when nowhere. For the right, the report became a symbol of liberal excess, and for the left, one of opportunities lost. Separate and Unequal is essential for anyone seeking to understand the roots of our vexed racial debates today.

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Just about anyone with a modest amount of beer knowledge will tell you that right here, right now is the best time in the history of mankind to be a beer drinker. With the most breweries in the United States since Prohibition and a global culture that is thriving and innovating, there are choices on tap like never before, using ingredients that a generation ago would have been considered taboo by beer makers. And looking around at any one of the 4,800 breweries currently operating in the U.S. will reveal a clientele as diverse as the nation itself.The truth, however, is that while it is a great time to be a beer drinker, it's also a confusing time. Poor quality, misinformation about flavors, and, perhaps, too much choice. Moreover, for every good news story about diversity of taste and positive economic impact, there's a dark side: Unfair business practices like large breweries paying for a tap instead of earning it by popular demand, small brewers denied access to ingredients by larger brewers monopolizing them, unsafe working conditions, and an undercurrent of sexism among brewers that still favors white males above all others. Quality often suffers as breweries try to grow too quickly and "craft" beers promote bitter, strong flavors at the expense of the more subtle brews. To drink beer is easy. Pour, put to lips, and swallow. To think critically about beer is much harder. Appreciating and conscientiously participating in beer culture today is about more than downing pints and understanding flavors. It requires an understanding of everything it took to get that beer into your glass, looking and tasting the way it does, priced the way it is, and sold at that particular venue. Drawing on history, economics, and countless interviews with industry insiders, expert John Holl here provides a complete guide to beer today, exploring how beer and breweries are building communities, changing tastes, and shaping lives.

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Not since Merrill Peterson's Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation has a scholar attempted to write a comprehensive biography of the most complex Founding Father. In Jefferson, John B. Boles plumbs every facet of Thomas Jefferson's life, all while situating him amid the sweeping upheaval of his times. We meet Jefferson the politician and political thinker-as well as Jefferson the architect, scientist, bibliophile, paleontologist, musician, and gourmet. We witness him drafting of the Declaration of Independence, negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, and inventing a politics that emphasized the states over the federal government - a political philosophy that shapes our national life to this day. Boles offers new insight into Jefferson's actions and thinking on race. His Jefferson is not a hypocrite, but a tragic figure - a man who could not hold simultaneously to his views on abolition, democracy, and patriarchal responsibility. Yet despite his flaws, Jefferson's ideas would outlive him and make him into nothing less than the architect of American liberty.

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In this revelatory new account, national security expert Timothy Naftali relates the full story of America's decades-long attempt to fight terrorism. On September 11, 2001, a long history of failures and missteps came to a head, with tragic results. But, explains Naftali, it didn't have to be so. Blind Spot traces the long history of American efforts to thwart terrorism, from World War II to the Munich Games hostage-taking to the first attack on the World Trade centre in 1993. In riveting detail, based on original research and interviews with the key participants, Naftali describes why our early successes in counterterrorism did not translate into success against Osama bin Laden later in the 1990s, and why, until 9/11, the domestic threat of terrorism was the largest blind spot in United States national security.

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In 1976 twenty-six California children were kidnapped from their school bus and buried alive for motives never explained. All the children survived. This bizarre event signaled the beginning of Lenore Terr's landmark study on the effect of trauma on children. In this book Terr shows how trauma has affected not only the children she's treated but all of us.

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The horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust still present some of the most disturbing questions in modern history: Why did Hitler's party appeal to millions of Germans, and how entrenched was anti-Semitism among the population? How could anyone claim, after the war, that the genocide of Europe's Jews was a secret? Did ordinary non-Jewish Germans live in fear of the Nazi state? In this unprecedented firsthand analysis of daily life as experienced in the Third Reich, What We Knew offers answers to these most important questions. Combining the expertise of Eric A. Johnson, an American historian, and Karl-Heinz Reuband, a German sociologist, What We Knew is the most startling oral history yet of everyday life in theThird Reich.

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When Homeward Bound first appeared in 1988, it forever changed the way we understand Cold War America. Previously, scholars understood the post-World War II era as a time when Americans turned away from politics to enjoy the fruits of peace and prosperity after decades of depression and war, while their leaders remained preoccupied with the Soviet threat and the dangers of the Atomic Age. Homeward Bound challenged the idea of an apolitical private arena, demonstrating that the Atomic Age and the Cold War were not merely the concerns of experts and policy makers, but infused American life on every level, from the boardroom to the bedroom. As Elaine Tyler May argues, the official foreign policy of "containment" toward the Soviet Union had a domestic corollary, in which the perceived dangers of the age--nuclear war, communist subversion, consumer excess, sexual experimentation, and women's emancipation--were "contained" within the family, an institution now expected to fulfill its members hopes and dreams for security and the good life in the midst of a frightening world. "Domestic containment" is now the standard interpretation of the era, and Homeward Bound has become a classic. This new edition includes an updated introduction and a new epilogue examining the legacy of Cold War obsessions with personal and family security in the present day.

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By 1991, following the disintegration first of the Soviet bloc and then of the Soviet Union itself, the United States was left standing tall as the only global super-power. The 21st century seemed destined to be yet another American century. But that optimism did not last long as the stock market bubble and the costly foreign unilateralism of the younger Bush presidency, as well as the financial catastrophe of 2008 jolted America - and much of the West - into a sudden recognition of its systemic vulnerability to unregulated greed. In Strategic Vision , esteemed author and former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that to quell mounting anxieties about the growing capacity for Eastern economic and technological innovation, America must define and pursue a long-term geopolitical vision. Only in this way will it become more strategically deliberate and historically enlightened in its global engagement with the new East. A tactical blueprint, Strategic Vision argues that without an America that is economically vital, socially appealing, responsibly powerful, and capable of sustaining an intelligent foreign engagement, the geopolitical prospects for the West could become increasingly grave.

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