Reviews (1)

Original, Refreshing, Instructive
This is an amazing book.It is hard to write about one's own family and make it interesting.To go further and make it not only interesting, but relevant to others, takes a writer of rare talent.Penn is clearly such a writer, and I was very pleasantly surprised at the creative and original approach taken in this work.The author draws thought-provoking parallels and connections between his own mixblood Indian family's dreams, visions, failures and successes, and those of other families, in particular other native and mixed-blood families, including exploration of the writing of many historical native American figures.This is a creative and very original book, highly recommended. ... Read more

Book Description

The apprehension of society as an aggregation of self-interested individuals is a dominant modern concern, but one first systematically articulated during the Enlightenment. This book approaches this problem from the perspective of the challenge offered to inherited traditions of morality and social understanding by Bernard Mandeville, whose infamous paradoxical maxim "private vices, public benefits" profoundly disturbed his contemporaries, while his The Fable of the Bees had a decisive influence on David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant. Professor Hundert examines the sources and strategies of Mandeville's science of human nature and the role of his ideas in shaping eighteenth century economic, social and moral theories. ... Read more

Book Description

Important ideas that helped shape 20th-century thought--ideas which continue to hold great significance for anyone interested in the social world--are made accessible in this illuminating volume. Readers will be motivated to delve into the deeper pool of knowledge available on major social theorists and their groundbreaking ideas. ... Read more

Book Description

This book is a biography of the husband and wife team that is largely responsible for developing social problems and social deviance as areas of research. Politics in the discipline of sociology is also examined.

"The Gallihers document the strains between 'Christian' and 'value-free' sociology and the constraints upon Betty and other women in a male-dominated academic world. These chapters offer a clear and systematic analysis of the historical and biographical sources of the Lees' intellectual opposition to, and life-long struggle against, the 'professionalization' of sociology. The book provides a rich and appealing biographical portrait of Betty and Al Lees' marital and professional partnership. It offers a significant contribution to the history of sociology." -- James D. Orcutt, Florida State University ... Read more

Book Description

"Few women of this century have been more ahead of their time than Margaret Mead. She awakened in people an awareness of global patterns of behavior on topics as diverse as sexual mores, food and culture, health and education. She spoke authoritatively to political and scientific issues as far-ranging as war and space travel. In this vivid and deeply personal portrait of Mead's brilliance, her foibles, humor, and her private reactions to friends and enemies, Uncommon Lives traces the intertwined lives of two remarkable women. As one of Mead's few life-long confidants, Grinager breaks through Mead's indomitable professional demeanor to reveal the woman behind this most unique thinker, who not only commanded the attention and respect of her fellow scientists but also influenced generations of women around the world." ... Read more

Reviews (1)

the best portrait of margaret mead's personality
Margaret Mead shared our home for the last thirty years of her life and was my godmother. My mother, Rhoda Metraux, worked as her collaborator and partner.

Margaret Mead was a fascinatingly complex person. The late Pat Grinager kept a detailed diary of her lengthy friendship with Mead and understood her personality very well. What we have here is a very well developed study of Mead's personality. If you want to know what kind of person Mead really was, you will find it here.

One brief story that tells one a lot about Dr. Mead. I once asked her to define the word, "Success" as in "Who is a Successful Person?" She replied, "That's easy. A successful person is one who before he dies, brings happiness to another person....who improves the life of a fellow human being." ... Read more

Book Description

Goronwy Rees (1909-1979), a Marxist intellectual turned cold warrior, claimed "writing books is the only thing I'm serious about." He resigned from the University College of Wales in 1957. This volume offers distinctive essays that describe vivid experiences in the author's life. "A Bundle of Sensations" describes Rees' wartime experiences and his intelligence work as well as his chapel childhood and a summer spent in Germany during the days of the Weimar republic."A Chapter of Accidents" explores his complex relationship with Guy Burgess, which led to his acrimonious departure from his position as principal of the University of Wales, Aberyswyth.The book is rich with introductory matter, background, and notes, and includes "A Winter in Berlin," an evocative look at Berlin under Nazi rule in 1934. ... Read more

Book Description

"This book is the product of close to half a century of my life. During all that time I have lived as an American in Mexico, the country that seized my heart and held me, no ransom possible. I have been privileged to travel and observe and write about its people, its geography, its art, its history. From Mexico City I have journeyed often to Maya country--roughly all of southeastern Mexico, the entirety of Belize and Guatemala, and westernmost Honduras and El Salvador. I was searching for those "lost" cities in the jungle that in fact had never been lost at all, except from the foreigner's point of view." ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Terrific Foreward
The forward by Jacqueline Larralde de Saenz is really terrific, very loving and detailed. I liked it. It brings the reader right into the book and the author's point of view, from the vantage point of this highly respected anthropologist. Highly recommended reading.

Fantastic Book
This is a fantastic book, really well written. It is also fun, funny and unusual. It sees things most people don't see. It notices and it describes and it informs. I loved it and am planning to give it to friends as a gift.

Demystifying the Maya
Mystery, enigma, consternation...all words associated with the Maya. This book, however, sees them in more intimate, more reasonable and more logical form. A wonderful travel book, great descriptions of the Maya World, but also a sensible approach to their culture. Be sure to read "The Other Side of Yesterday, the China-Maya Connection", by the same author. Thought provoking and exciting!

The Chiapas Conflict
Anyone curious or confused by the ongoing conflict in Chiapas will find everything he or she needs to know, among many other things, in this really enjoyable, highly readable book. I recommend it for both veterans and first timers.

The Chiapas conflict
Anyone curious or confused by the ongoing conflict in Chiapas will find everything he or she needs to know, among many other things, in this readable, really enjoyable little book. I recommend it for seasoned Maya area travelers as well as newcomers to the subject. ... Read more

Book Description

Long recognized as a foundational figure in the development of social scientific thought, Emile Durkheim's work has been the subject of intense debate over the years. This authoritative and comprehensive collection of essays re-examines the impact of Durkheim's thought, considering the historical significance of his work as well as evaluating his ideas in relation to current issues and debates. Leading authorities in the field have contributed to this landmark volume that redefines the relevance of Durkheim to the human sciences in the twenty-first century. ... Read more

Book Description

Some people ride the tide of human progress...and change or create nothing. Some people fight the tide...and change or create little. And some people help create the tide--- and improve the course of human development. Lee Fryer, Author of Song of America is such a person. The book describes his family saga and some of his creative work: Helping to build and adapt the ?supervised credit system? for financing bankrupt farm families and other services of the Farm Security Administration in America?s depression era. Helping to create and build a viable insurance-based health and dental service. Helping to build and develop the migratory labor camps and farm employment services. Helping to design and manage the Japanese evacuation services in World War II. Helping to reduce and cope with racism in the Farmer?s Home Administration, and yes, Lee has a successful multi-racial family life. ... Read more

Book Description

Confronting the Drug Control Establishment is a biography of Alfred R. Lindesmith and an intellectual history of his times. A sociologist at Indiana University, Lindesmith believed legal prohibition of addictive drugs was futile and wrote widely on the threat to democracy inherent in such a policy.

Lindesmith's career began during the 1930s and developed along with the emerging drug prohibitions in the early and mid-twentieth century. Throughout his life Lindesmith attempted to utilize his research for the creation of more rational and humane drug control laws. His consistent message was that the addict's self-concept is a central element in human addiction. Lindesmith felt that an overriding influence on an addict's self-concept is a fear of withdrawal, which keeps an addict from seeking treatment and becomes a key driving force in the drug problem. ... Read more

Book Description

The letters in The Story of a Marriage were written by Malinowski and his wife, Elsie Masson, from 1916 to her death in 1935. They chronicle their meeting and their subsequent extraordinary marriage, showing Malinowski in a new light, not just as a teacher and scholar, but as husband, father and friend. His wife, so far largely unknown, is shown as a humorous, courageous and talented woman. ... Read more

Book Description

"My legacy will be like cash, which is distributed to many heirs, each transforming his portion into a profit that conforms to his nature: this profit will no longer reveal its derivation from my legacy." -- Georg Simmel (1918)

These prophetic words, written shortly before Georg Simmel's death in 1918, have held true to the present day.His immense cultural capital was distributed to many heirs, but after his death little trace of his legacy remained.Although he was a member of the Department of Philosophy at Berlin University for most of his life, Simmel is most widely recognized not as a philosopher but as the founding father of the discipline of sociology.This important work recovers Simmel's reputation among his contemporaries as "the philosopher of the avant garde" by revealing the cultural origins of his sociological thought.

GEORG SIMMEL AND AVANT-GARDE SOCIOLOGY pioneers a new interpretation of Simmel as a thinker whose critical ideas were shaped by the aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural movements of his era: Naturalism, Nietzscheanism, and feminism, respectively.Here, Simmel emerges as a public intellectual who had an enormous impact on German modernism.He is revealed as the intellectual godfather of major cultural and political crusades, including literary Expressionism and the antiwar movement known as Activism.Author Ralph M. Leck also examines Simmel's seminal influence on the feminist and homosexual rights movements, as well as his meaningful contribution to Western Marxism.Leck's groundbreaking research shows Simmel for the first time as a key figure in the intellectual history of European counterculture, vividly demonstrating why Simmel is to sociology what Newton is to physics.

This is the first study to investigate systematically the breadth of Simmel's body of work and his cultural legacy.Simmel's wide-ranging social theories--dealing with such themes as alienation, money culture, social hierarchy, and social trends--are still relevant to current debates and theories about gender, sociology, culture, and politics.GEORG SIMMEL AND AVANT-GARDE SOCIOLOGY will appeal to both students and scholars who are concerned with the origins and aesthetics of modernity. ... Read more

Book Description

Vance Packard's number-one bestsellers - Hidden Persuaders (1957), Status Seekers (1959), and Waste Makers (1960) - taught the generation of Americans that came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s about the dangers posed by advertising, social climbing, and planned obsolescence. Like Betty Friedan and William H. Whyte, Jr., Packard (1914- ) is a journalist who played an influential role as the largely complacent 1950s gave way to the tumultuous 1960s. He is also one of the first social critics to foster and to benefit from the newly energized social and political consciousness of this period. Raised on a Pennsylvania farm, shaped by the New Deal at home and the rise of fascism abroad, and trained as a journalist, Packard turned to writing nonfiction books when he faced unemployment in 1956. In addition to his three best-known early works, his later books explore many of the forces shaping America, including invasion of privacy, changing sexual mores, the uprooting of families, and the rise of the ultra rich in the Reagan era. The titles of Packard's most famous works have become a part of our everyday vocabulary. Based in part on interviews with Packard, Daniel Horowitz's intellectual biography focuses on the period during which Packard wrote his major works of social criticism. Horowitz also traces the influence of the writer's early family life and education on his thought. Packard's life illuminates the dilemmas of a freelance social critic without inherited wealth or academic affiliation: the tension between making a living and sustaining independence; the problems posed by a dramatically fluctuating royalty income; and the impact of changing relationships with audience,publishers, intellectuals, academics, and new media such as television and the New Journalism. Packard's career also expands our understanding of how one era helped create the next, underscoring how the adversarial 1960s drew on the mass culture of the previous decade. ... Read more

Book Description

In his latest book of interviews, Edward W. Said discusses the centrality of popular resistance to his understanding of culture, history, and social change. He reveals his latest thoughts on the war on terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and lays out a compelling vision for a secular, democratic future in the Middle East_and globally.

Edward W. Said, a renowned cultural and literary critic, was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, and was educated there, in Egypt, and in the United States. His books include Orientalism, The Question of Palestine, Covering Islam, Culture and Imperialism, and The Politics of Dispossession. He has also published a memoir, Out of Place. Mr. Said is University Professor of English and Comparative Lit-erature at Columbia University. In October 2001, he received the $200,000 Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement.

David Barsamian_s interview books feature conversations with luminaries such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Edward W. Said. A regular contributor to The Progressive and Z Magazine, Barsamian_s most recent interview books include Propaganda and the Public Mind and Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire, available from South End Press. He is also the author of The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting. Barsamian is the producer of the critically acclaimed program Alternative Radio.

Reviews (1)

Said's eloquent post-9/11 summing up of the world
"The Origins of Terrorism" is by far the most important chapter in this book. In it, Said points out that in spite of the oft-repeated American ideal of democracy, US policy has generally favoured whichever Middle Eastern despot has tended to uphold the interests of US oil companies. He then observes that Muslim fundamentalist terror has a basically Marxist root, in that it originates "in the sense of betrayal that many ordinary Muslims feel... living in poverty and desperation and ignorance. It's not difficult to start rallying people in the name of Islam." (page 107).

This is analysis at a level of rationality unthinkable for the likes of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis, with their simplistic reduction of all the problems in the Middle East to the religion of Islam, the root of all evil. ... Read more