Bøker utgitt av Lexington Books

This book explores the communication processes of the Transition Movement, a community-led global social movement, as it was adapted in a local context. First it analyzes how the movement's grand narratives of responding to ';climate change' and creating greater ';resiliency' were communicated into local community-based stories, responses, and actions in the Transition Town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Second, it seeks to understand the multilayered communication processes that facilitate these actions toward sustainable social change. Transition Amherst developed and/or supported projects that addressed reducing dependency on peak-oil, creating community-based-local economies, supporting sustainable food production and consumption, and participating in more efficient transportation, among others. The popularity of the model coincides with an increase in the interest in and use of the term ';sustainability' by media, academics and policymakers around the world, and an increase in the global use of digital technology as a resource for information gathering and sharing. Thus this book situates itself at the intersections of a global environmental and economic crisis, the popularization of the term ';sustainability,' and an increasingly digitized and networked global society in order to better understand how social change is contextualized and facilitated in a local community via a global network. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the theories of Transition are applied over an extended period of time in practice, on the ground in a Transition town.

Transnational Feminist Rhetorics and Gendered Leadership in Global Politics examines the rhetoric surrounding women who hold or have held the highest office of a nation-state. Heads of state, such as Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Michelle Bachelet, have navigated their ascent to executive government in vastly different ways while contending with gendered expectations of leadership, especially since most of them are the first woman to occupy their country's highest governmental position. This book analyzes how these women rhetorically perform their positions of powerdiscursively, visually, and physicallyin a traditionally male leadership role. Specifically, this project examines how certain rhetorical acts open up and close down the potential to confront the gendered expectations surrounding political leadership. When people analyze, campaign for, or critique a ';female prime minister' or a ';woman president,' they are not just talking about one woman but also referencing a collective neoliberal logic that interrupts and reaffirms the belief that the nation-state is an eternal, inevitable structure. Diverse political figures, such as Angela Merkel, Julia Gillard, and Indira Gandhi, are continually put in conversation with one another, through popular media representations, academic scholarship, and political analyses. This book examines the effect of such comparisons and connections, ultimately arguing that many of these gestures reduce or over-simplify women's contributions to world politics. In order to show this effect, this book manifests the transnational connections found in autobiographies, organizations, political commentaries, biographical films, and other sources that focus on women who have been heads of state.

How did a music instrument transplated to South America by colonial Jesuit missionaries earn the official designation as Paraguays cultural national symbol? This ethnomusicological and organological study of the Paraguayan diatonic harp in the twentieth century tells its story as an emblematic national musical instrument. First used liturgically by Jesuit missions in colonial times, the transplanted European diatonic harp was transformed and adopted into the folk music vocabulary of Paraguay and the Ro de la Plata region. Following the commercial success of Paraguayan harpist Felix Perez Cardozo in the 1930s in Argentina, the instruments symbolic value as an icon of social, cultural, and national identity was articulated in local traditions such as popular folk music festivals. It received designation of arpa paraguaya (Paraguayan harp) and, in 2010, official recognition as simbolo de la cultura nacional (cultural national symbol). The authors fieldwork in Paraguay and continuous contact with composers, educators, festival organizers, harp performers, researchers, and festival organizers have provided unique insights into the development of the Paraguayan harp tradition as a cultural icon of the nation.

Congress in the latter part of the nineteenth century decided to enact a series of statutes facilitating state enforcement of their respective criminal laws. Subsequently, Congress enacted statutes federalizing what had been solely state crimes, thereby establishing federal court and state court concurrent jurisdiction over these crimes.Federalization of state crimes has been criticized by numerous scholars, U.S. Supreme Court justices, and national organizations. Such federalization has congested the calendars of the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals leading to delays in civil cases because of the Speedy TrialAct that vacates a criminal indictment if a trial is not commenced within a specific number of days, resulted in over-crowded U.S. penitentiaries, and raises the issue of double jeopardy that is prohibited by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of each state.This book examines the impact of federalization of state crime and draws conclusions regarding its desirability. It also offers recommendations directed to Congress and the President, one recommendation direct to state legislatures for remedial actions to reduce the undesirable effects of federalized state crimes, and one recommendation that Congress and all states enter into a federal-interstate criminal suppression compact.

This foundational Peace and Conflict Studies text is formatted to fit inside a 14 week college/university term. The chapters are designed to provide a succinct overview of research, theory, and practice that can be supplemented with material chosen by the professor. The book introduces students to the core concepts of the field, and provides an up to date alternative to the Peace and Conflict readers. It will move from historical development of the field to the way forward into the future. Each chapter will reflect current trends and research and contain up to date examples, questions for discussion or for potential student research topics, suggested reading, and engaged teaching activities.

Humor and Latina/o Camp in Ugly Betty: Funny Looking expands the vista of critical approaches to comedy and representational politics on mainstream television from an interdisciplinary Latina/o studies approach. Gonzlez and Rodriguez y Gibson examine how Ugly Betty uses humor and Latina/o camp to reframe socially charged issues on the show: representations of masculinity and familia, immigration, drag and queer subjectivities, Latina sexuality, and finally, a Latina feminist critique of the American Dream. Ugly Betty moves beyond the binaries of traditional representational politics and opens a vista of critical possibility applicable to all mainstream texts that portray people of color through comedy. This work will be of interest to scholars in media studies, Latina/o studies, and communication studies.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. New London that a city might take property from one private owner and transfer it to another for economic redevelopment. The ruling marked a new interpretation of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, and set a precedent which has raised significant questions regarding government takings and property rights. The ruling also reawakened a public interest in private property and created a vicious reaction among many citizens, journalists, academics, and legislators. This book is unique because it offers an in-depth analysis of the case law found in the opinions and decisions of the state and federal courts, but also uses a variety of other sources including the oral argument before the Supreme Court, the amicus curiae briefs, American political and legal history, as well as the personal stories of those involved in the case. This book also analyzes the public backlash from several different perspectives including opinion polls, media coverage, academic articles and commentary, subsequent case law, and legislative action. Finally, this book offers an insightful critique of the case, including what the Supreme Court got wrong, what it got right, and where the law and courts should go from here.

The American people generally perceive that the United States is headed in ';the wrong direction,' US influence worldwide is waning, Capitol Hill is not adequately representing the public's interests, and their personal economic wellbeing is in jeopardy. This book squarely tackles the list of ';fault lines' currently facing the United States, including, among others, Beltway dysfunctionalism, concentrated wealth and income not seen since the late 1920s, an ultra-expensive and inefficient health-care system, runaway entitlement spending, stagnant upward mobility, debilitating ';crony capitalism,' and incoherent foreign policy. Even more importantly, the book offers explicit policy recommendations for solving each fault line, relying extensively on ';best practices' in the public and private sectors both at home and abroad. Moreover, the author emphasizes that the United States is entering a special period which provides it with advantages not found anywhere else in the worlda major energy boom, favorable demographics, unparalleled high-technology innovation, huge inward investment flows from abroad, the revival of its manufacturing sector, and its magnetism in attracting to its shores the very best and brightest from around the world.Dr. Fry asserts that it is quite reasonable to assume that the United States will enter a ';Renaissance America' period by 2030. Doing so, however, will require painful short-term sacrifices, major policy changes, and the restoration of vibrant representative government. In effect, the American people must overwhelmingly embrace Abraham Lincoln's vision of governance ';of the people, by the people, and for the people.'

This book examines the current status of Mexicano and Latino politics in the United States. Political scientist and community activist Armando Navarro maintains that both represent a dysfunctional and failed mode of politics, attributable to their system maintenance and mainstream ideological orientation and approach. As colonial agents, they protect both a United States that is decaying and declining and the degenerative liberal capitalist system. Navarro argues that the United States is not a representative democracy; but in fact, is a ';White Corpocratic Dictatorship' controlled by Capital, which is evolving into a Fascist State. The book provides an in-depth analysis and contention that Mexicanos and Latinos in Aztln (Southwest) are an ';occupied and internal colonized people.' It argues they are the ';Palestinians and Kurds' of the United States. His supposition is sustained by the book's profiles of Mexicano political history, demography, socioeconomics, electoral politics, immigration, and the Triad Crisis (e.g., Second Great Depression, Global Economic Crisis, and Global Capitalist Crisis). Each chapter provides the justification and case for Navarro's two unique alternative change models, applicable to today's bankrupt and failed Mexicano and Latino Politics in the twenty-first century. The preferred model is ';Aztln's Politics of a Nation-Within-a-Nation (APNWN),' which is based on the models of the Mormon Nation of Utah and that of French Quebec. Navarro, therefore, calls for the reformation of the United States' liberal capitalist system by way of social democracy for the empowerment of Mexicanos and Latinos. His second model is ';Aztln's Politics of Separatism' (APS), which offers two strategic options, (1) Aztln (Southwest) becoming a separate and sovereign nation-state or (2) its reannexation and re-integration with Mexico. Navarro outlines a ';plan of action' for building a New Movement designed to attain APNWN or APS. In addition, several ominous forecasts are made, such as the United States being in a state of decline and no longer a hegemonic superpower due to the rise of a multi-polar world. Moreover, Navarro attributes the United States' decline to the inherent contradictions of global capitalism. His sobering message is that if the current economic conditions are left unchanged, this will produce an ';End of Times' scenariothe unleashing of the ';Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.'

The dominant political theme of the State of Israel is the perpetual quest for security. In its first 25 years, Israel experienced five wars with Arab states declaring their goal to destroy Israel. In American Christian Support for Israel:Standing with the Chosen People, 19481975, Eric R. Crouse examines how American Christians responded to Israel's wars and the persistent threats to its security. While some were quick to condemn Israel as it made difficult and unpopular decisions in its fight for survival in a hostile region, conservative Christians were trustworthy supporters, routinely voicing uplifting reports. Crouse argues that Israel's embodiment of western ideals and its remarkable economic development gave conservative Christians good reasons to favor Israel in a troubled Middle East, but the main reason for their unconditional support was the key biblical text of Christian Zionism: ';I will bless those who bless you [Abraham and his descendants], and I will curse him who curses you' (Genesis 12:3).

Violence in Caribbean Literature: Stories of Stones and Blood, this book looks at the scene of the throwing of a stone found in five novels, and uses it as a starting point to an examination of the turmoil of history in the Caribbean, the colonial education imposed on Caribbean populations, the gendered relations that exist today in the Caribbean region, the political status and aspirations of Caribbean nations, and the psychological impact of colonization on Caribbean minds. The trope of the stone and the analysis of the violence it delivers provide the thread that conducts the linked readings of these novels, written by Dominican Jean Rhys, Trinidadian Merle Hodge, Guadeloupean Gisele Pineau, Martinican Patrick Chamoiseau, and Jamaican-American Michelle Cliff.The analytical and critical readings of these writers' novels complement each other, and draw out their commonalities, echoes, and differences, while the juxtaposition of Anglophone and Francophone novels from different Caribbean nations contributes to a polyphonic understanding of the region. While the book offers diversity in the range of countries and languages represented, and in the interdisciplinarity of the scholarly fields that intersect in its cultural discussions, it maintains its coherence by the unifying theme of violence and its representations in Caribbean literature.

In Chapter 38:21-25, the Qur'an relates a very short narrative about the biblical King David's seeking and receiving God's forgiveness. The earliest Muslim exegetes interpreted the qur'anic verses as referring to the Hebrew Bible's story of David's adultery with Bathsheba, as related in 2 Samuel 12:1-13. Later Muslims, however, having developed the concept of prophetic impeccability, radically reinterpreted those verses to show David as innocent of any wrongdoing since, in the Muslim tradition, he is not only a king, but a prophet as well. David in the Muslim Tradition: The Bathsheba Affair outlines the approach of the Qur'an to shared scriptures, and provides a detailed look at the development of the exegetical tradition and the factors that influenced such exegesis. By establishing four distinct periods of exegesis, Khaleel Mohammed examines the most famous explanations in each stratum to show the metamorphosis from blame to exculpation. He shows that the Muslim development is not unique, but is very much in following the Jewish and Christian traditions, wherein a similar sanitization of David's image has occurred.

Facing South to Africa is a bold synthesis of the ideas that have made Afrocentric theorists the leading voices of the African renaissance. Written from the vantage point of the philosophical and political discourse that emerged over the past twenty-five years, this is a highly readable and accessible introduction to African social and cultural criticism. Molefi Kete Asante engages in the practice of critical thinking by raising fundamental questions about how Africans view themselves and the world. Tackling the themes of culture, education, social sciences, the university, politics, African unity, and the prospects for peace in Africa, Facing South to Africa is a fresh, daring, and popularizing synthesis of the best critical thought on the issues of modern knowledge. Asante's plan is to reorient our thinking on Africa by asking questions of Africa and Africans rather than imposing preconceived, external ideas on African issues.

This biography of Franois Buzot, a Girondin leader in both the Constituent Assembly (1789-91) and the National Convention (1792-93), illustrates how his early life in Evreux and his training as a lawyer influenced his ideas and actions during the French Revolution, when he championed individual rights and the rule of law in a republic. A provincial leader who distrusted the increasingly centralized government in Paris, Buzot worked tirelessly to defend departmental interests, which led his Jacobin opponents to accuse him of federalism. Buzot became an active participant in the factional disputes dividing the national assembly in 1792-93, which led to frequent attacks against him and his cohorts by the radical press and demands for their impeachment. Consequently, Buzot and twenty-nine other Girondin deputies were expelled from the assembly in June 1793 and placed under house arrest. While Buzot and some of his friends escaped and fled to Caen, those Girondins who had remained in Paris were executed that October. After their attempt to form a large departmental force to march against the government in Paris had failed, Buzot and his friends fled to St. Emilion, where they survived as fugitives, often hiding in abandoned stone quarries, until June 1794. Buzot's memoirs, written when he was on the run in 1793-94, provide an unusual contemporary account of the difficult and dangerous period known as the Terror. In addition, letters to and from his friends, notably Madame Roland, with whom he shared a romantic relationship, offer a more personal view of Buzot than can be found in most texts. Although Buzot was honored as a local hero by the citizens of Evreux in 1789, by the summer of 1793 the authorities had declared him a traitor and ordered his home demolished, and its furnishings sold at auction. Honored again during the centennial celebration of the French Revolution, by 1989 he had almost been forgotten. This first biographical treatment in English of Franois Buzot, a ';bourgeois gentilhomme,' provides a new dimension to the story of an important revolutionary leader.

Media Marathoning: Immersions in Morality is a scholarly study of the intense relationship between reader and story world, analyzing the way audiences become absorbed in a fictive text and dedicate many hours to exploring its narrative contours. Rather than view these media experiences as mindless indulgences, ';media marathoning' connotes a conjoined triumph of commitment and stamina. Compared to more traditional, slower-paced media engagement patterns, media marathoning affords readers greater depth of story world engagement, maximizing the emotional and cognitive rewards of the media experience. Through immersive marathoning experiences, audiences can seriously engage with mediated questions about human nature and society, refining our orientation toward morality through internal dialogue about the story and communication with other readers as we process the meaningful journey. As digital technologies facilitate easier, user-centered access to media texts, narratives increase in complexity, and more readers seek immersive story world experiences, marathoning looks to be the new normal of media engagement. Drawing from qualitative studies of book, film, and television marathoners, along with textual analysis of commonly marathoned stories, Media Marathoning presents a holistic look at marathoning's cultural impact.

Africa Nations have contributed to peace operations in conflict zones across the world since the deployment of the United Nations Operations in the Congo in 1960. This has placed Africa as a major stakeholder in the maintenance of peace and security. For over fifty years Ghana has earned the international reputation as one of the largest and consistent Troop Contributing Country in United Nations mandated peace operations. While Ghana has long been an active contributor to peace operations, there are few or no comparative studies that systematically analyze the actual roles played by troops in many of the different conflict context where they have served. This book therefore, focuses on a comparison of two peace operations undertaken by the forces of an African Nation in two different missions in Lebanon and Liberia.

Japan's March 11, 2011 triple horror of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown is its worst catastrophe since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recovery remains an ongoing ordeal. Japans Responses to the March 2011 Disaster: Our Inescapable In-between uncovers the pivotal role of longstanding cultural worldviews and their impact on responses to this gut-wrenching disaster. Through unpacking the pivotal notion in Japanese ethics of aidagara, or ';in-betweenness,' it offers testament to a deep-rooted sense of community. Accounts from survivors, victims' families, key city officials, and volunteers reveal a remarkable fiber of moral grit and resilience that sustains Japan's common struggle to rally and carve a future with promise and hope.Calamities snatch us out of the mundane and throw us into the intensity of the moment. They challenge our moral fiber. Trauma, individual and collective, is the uninvited litmus test of character, personal and social. Ultimately, whether a society rightfully recovers from disaster has to do with its degree of connectedness, the embodied physical, interpersonal, face-to-face engagement we have with each other. As these stories bring to light, along with Michael Brannigan's extensive research, personal encounters with survivors, and experience as a volunteer in Japan's stricken areas, our degree of connectedness determines how we in the long run weather the storm, whether the storm is natural, technological, or human. Ultimately, it illustrates that how we respond to and recover after the storm hinges upon how we are with each other before the storm.

Lost in the Stars is a biographical study of Alexander William Roberts, a Free Church of Scotland missionary educator who in 1883 was posted to the Lovedale Institution at Alice, South Africa. Inspired by the night sky of the southern hemisphere, Roberts became a leading observer of variable stars and an early contributor to the theory of close interacting binary stars. He actively promoted the development of colonial scientific culture and was elected president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1913. His teaching career at Lovedale fostered a commitment to the interests of his African students and their communities. In 1920 Roberts was appointed to the South African senate to represent ';native' Africans; he also served as senior member of the Native Affairs Commission. Despite his liberal instincts he acquiesced to the movement toward racial segregation as advanced in the Natives (Urban Areas) and Native Administration Acts. Roberts nonetheless militated against the erosion of the Cape non-racial franchise rights; he resigned from the Native Affairs Commission just as the all-white parliament was poised to remove Africans from the common voters' roll. His engagement with the politics of race interfered with Roberts's astronomical research. Although he published nearly one hundred papers in scientific journals most of his observational data remained unknown until the Boyden Observatory's Roberts archive was digitized in 2006. His influence as a mission educator also has been little known, although among his pupils were journalist and academic D.D.T. Jabavu, the physician James Moroka, and Swazi king Sobhuza I.

Marriage for Life begins by listening to the lived experiences of Catholic, married, HIV-positive women, in order to better understand their struggles. The eight women interviewed in Chicago, Illinois, USA, shared their stories of marriage, of family life, of church involvement, and of living with HIV. Their candid reflections offer a fresh and grounded perspective on the challenges of living with HIV in a US context. After listening to and learning from these women's experiences, Reimer-Barry constructs a theology of Christian marriage that is life-giving in a world with AIDS. While Catholic teachings have developed and now affirm the equal dignity of women and men, troubling legacies of women's subordination remain embedded in liturgical practices and theological texts. Arguing that self-care is an indispensable component of a healthy marriage, Reimer-Barry constructs a life-affirming theology of marriage that is sensitive to the struggles of her collaborators. She argues that marriage for life must promote the full flourishing of both partners, respect wives as equal partners with their husbands, and offer a coherent and empowering sexual ethic. Building on the wisdom of her collaborators' lived experiences, Reimer-Barry examines the need for a more adequate Catholic response to HIV and AIDS, arguing that church communities should promote comprehensive sexual education, affirm both abstinence and condom use for HIV prevention, and actively work to reduce stigmatizing behaviors within church communities. She also unpacks the implications of marriage for life for Catholic liturgical practice, marriage preparation programs, sexual education programs, and family ministries. Modeling her method on what Pope Francis calls the ';art of accompaniment,' Reimer-Barry argues that Catholic theology of marriage must be renewed and updated so that all can plainly understand that marriage is for life.

The writer of alternate history asks ';what if?' What if one historical event were different, what would the world look like today? In a similar way, the postmodern philosopher of history suggests that history is literature, or that if we read certain historical details differently we would get a distinctly different interpretation of past events. While the science fiction alternate history means to illuminate the past, to increase our understanding of past events, however, the postmodern approach to history typically suggests that such understanding is impossible. To the postmodern philosopher, history is like literature in that it does not offer the reader access to the past, but only an interesting story. Building on criticism that suggests personal psychological reasons for this obscuring the past, and using a literary theory of readership, this book challenges the postmodern approach to history. It channels the speculative power of science fiction to read the works of postmodern philosophy of history as alternate histories themselves, and to map the limits and pathology of their forgetful reading of the past.

Considering the current rash of film remakes, vintage video game downloads, and box sets of bygone television shows, media today is obsessed with nostalgia. Instead of presenting a past that functions as an adaptive mirror with which we can compare our contemporary situation, the past is instead presented as an individualized version that transfixes us as uncritical citizens of our own culture. Mediated Nostalgia: Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media argues that the cultural implication of a cross-media eternal return to nostalgia is an increasing reliance on defining who we are as people and societies by what media we consumed as children. The unblinking eye toward the past knows no progress, or at the very least, does not employ the past to compare and adaptively engage with the present or future. Examining film, literature, television, and video games, Ryan Lizardi tackles the idea of why that strong sense of nostalgia is such a popular tactic for the media industry, and why it is problematic.

Audience Responses to Real Media Violence: The Knockout Game considers an emerging and relatively overlooked area of media effects research: user-generated cellphone videos that feature real violence and its victims. Focusing specifically on a recent sinister media trend known as the Knockout Game, Mary Grace Antony explores how audiences respond to the victims in these videos. How do we assess the realism of this violence? And how do these evaluations of realism in turn influence our feelings of empathy and concern for the victims of violence? The burgeoning abundance and availability to real media violence online makes these questions more relevant today than ever before, and illustrates our complex responses to new and emerging media subgenres.

This book is an exploration of what would seem to be a simple question, but is actually the object of a profound quest';who is a Jew?' This is a deeply complex issue, both within Judaism, and in interactions between Jews and Christians. JewishChristian Difference and Modern Jewish Identity: Seven Twentieth-Century Converts contends that in the twentieth century the JewishChristian relationship has changed to the extent that definitions of Jewish identity were reshaped. The stories of the seven influential and creative converts that are related in this book indicate that the borders dividing the Jewish and Christian faiths are, for many, more fluid and permeable than ever before.

Niccol Machiavelli's The Prince remains an influential book more than five centuries after he wrote his timeless classic. However, the political philosophy expressed by Machiavelli in his tome is often misunderstood. Although he thought humans to be rational, self-interested creatures, and even though he proposed an approach to politics in which the ends justify the means, Machiavelli was not, as some have argued, simply ';a teacher of evil.' The Prince's many ancient and medieval examples, while relevant to sixteenth century readers, are lost on most of today's students of Machiavelli. Examples from modern films and television programs, which are more familiar and understandable to contemporary readers, provide a better way to accurately teach Machiavelli's lessons. Indeed, modern media, such as Breaking Bad, The Godfather, The Walking Dead, Charlie Wilson's War, House of Cards, Argo, and The Departed, are replete with illustrations that teach Machiavelli's critical principles, including the need to caress or annihilate, learning ';how not to be good,' why it is better to be feared than loved, and how to act as both the lion and the fox. Modern media are used in this book to exemplify the tactics Machiavelli advocated and to comprehensively demonstrate that Machiavelli intended for government actors and those exercising power in other contexts to fight for a greater good and strive to achieve glory.

The term ';urban ecology' has become a buzzword in various disciplines, including the social and natural sciences as well as urban planning and architecture. The environmental humanities have been slow to adapt to current theoretical debates, often excluding human-built environments from their respective frameworks. This book closes this gap both in theory and in practice, bringing together ';urban ecology' with ecocritical and cultural ecological approaches by conceptualizing the city as an integral part of the environment and as a space in which ecological problems manifest concretely. Arguing that culture has to be seen as an active component and integral factor within urban ecologies, it makes use of a metaphorical use of the term, perceiving cities as spatial phenomena that do not only have manifold and complex material interrelations with their respective (natural) environments, but that are intrinsically connected to the ideas, imaginations, and interpretations that make up the cultural symbolic and discursive side of our urban lives and that are stored and constantly renegotiated in their cultural and artistic representations. The city is, within this framework, both seen as an ecosystemically organized space as well as a cultural artifact. Thus, the urban ecology outlined in this study takes its main impetus from an analysis of examples taken from contemporary culture that deal with urban life and the complex interrelations between urban communities and their (natural and built) environments.

This book begins with the analysis of America's post-war intelligence operations, propaganda campaigns, and strategic psychological warfare in Japan. Banking on nuclear safety myths, Japan promoted an aggressive policy of locating and building nuclear power plants in depopulated areas suffering from a significant decline of local industries and economies. The Fukushima nuclear disaster substantiated that U.S. propaganda programs left a long lasting legacy in Japan and beyond and created the futile ground for the future nuclear disaster. The book reveals Japans tripartite organization of the dominating state, media-monopoly, and nuclear-plant oligarchy advancing nuclear proliferation. It details America's unprecedented pro-nuclear propaganda campaigns; Japan's secret ambitions to develop its own nuclear bombs; U.S. dumping of reprocessed plutonium on Japan; and the joint U.S.-Nippon propaganda campaigns for safe nuclear-power and the current ';safe-nuclear particles' myths. The study shows how the bankruptcy of the central state has led to increased burdens on the population in post-nuclear tsunami era, and the ensuing dangerous ionization of the population now reaching into the future.

This is a study of a progressive law firm and its three partners. The firm was founded in 1936 and existed until the death of one partner in 1965. The partners were harassed by the FBI primarily for defending labor union members and leaders and the defense of both. The firm's primary client was Harry Bridges, the long term President on the International Longshoreman's and Warehouseman's Union (ILWU). The irony was that the more the FBI persecuted labor unions, the more business the firm had from those harassed by the FBI. During this time the FBI was primarily interested in controlling the Communist Party. While the clients of the firm were sometimes Communists, the law partners were not Communist Party members. In both of these ways the FBI was wasting its time in persecuting this firm. Although the primary data used involved existing records (for example all of the partners had extensive FBI files), we also interviewed colleagues and relatives of the partners.

The book draws on some of the scholarship in perception studies and ';Normative Power Europe' theory. The study of perceptions, although dating back to the mid-1970s, is gaining renewed currency in recent years both in international relations, in general, and in European Union studies, in particular. And yet, despite the significance of external perceptions of the European Union, there is still a lack of theoretical forays into this area as well as an absence of empirical investigations of actual external role conceptions. These lacunae in scholarly work are significant, since how the European Union is perceived outside its borders, and what factors shape these perceptions, are crucial for deepening the theory of ';Normative Power Europe.' The book analyzes Israeli perceptions towards ';Normative Power Europe,' the European Union, and NATO through five themes that, the book argues, underscore different dimensions of key Israeli conceptions of ';Normative Power Europe' and NATO. The book seeks to contribute to the existing research on the European Union's role as a ';normative power,' the Union's external representations, and on Israeli-European Union relations more broadly.

Even before the end of Reconstruction in Arkansas, the state already possessed a long-standing reputation for violence, including lynchings, duels, and feuds. However, the years following Reconstruction witnessed the creation of new forms of mob violence. All across the state, gangs of whites sought to drive African Americans from their homes, their jobs, and their positions of authority, creating communities shamelessly advertised as ';100% white.' This happened not only in the highland regions, the Ozarks and the Ouachitas, where the expulsion of African Americans created so-called ';sundown towns,' but it also occurred in the low-lying Delta lands of eastern Arkansas, where cotton was king and where masked mobs of landless ';whitecappers' and ';nightriders' regularly dealt terror and murder to black sharecroppers.Racial Cleansing in Arkansas, 18831924: Politics, Land, Labor, and Criminality by Guy Lancaster is the first book to examine the phenomenon of racial cleansing within the context of one particular state, illustrating how violence relates to geography and economic development. Lancaster analyzes the wholesale expulsion of African Americans and the emergence of ';sundown towns' together with a survey of more limited deportations, including those with blatant political goals as well as vigilante violence. The book has broader implications not only for the study of Southern and American history but also for a deeper understanding of ethnic and racial conflict, local politics, and labor history

Travel writing has a long history, the accounts as varied as the reasons why people travel. Although most travel publications of the eighteenth century were written by men, those by women, perhaps most famously Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, were also widely read.The Travel Journals of Henrietta Marchant Liston: North America & Lower Canada, 17961800 consists of the nine journals that Mrs. Liston kept while she and her husband Robert Liston, the minister from Great Britain (1796-1800), resided in Philadelphia, at that time the capital of the United States. Mrs. Liston wrote her journals (which, with one exception, have never been published) for her personal use as an aide-memoire to share with family and friends. To experience this middle-aged woman's adventurous spirit as she and her husband travel as far south as Charleston, South Carolina and as far north as Quebec, Canadalong before the transportation conveniences and superhighways of modern-day travelcan only be termed amazing. Full of zest, her writing abounds with ';you-are-there' moments. Mrs. Liston was genuinely curious about the New World: she wanted to learn about the different regions, to interact with the people who lived there, and to visit its natural wonders. She was astonished by the variety of the North American landscape, particularly its flora.Each journal has an introduction to put Mrs. Liston's narrative in historical context. She is an intelligent and discerning guide to the eastern part of North America at a time of territorial expansion, of dispossession of Indian Nations from their territories by settlers, and of international upheavals. She and Robert Liston, a seasoned diplomat, observed and participated in the tumultuous events of the last years of the eighteenth century: the resignation of President George Washington and the orderly transfer of power to the next elected president; the ';Quasi War' with France; and the rise of the political party system, to name but a few. Mrs. Liston's description of their friendship with President and Mrs. Washington is clear-eyed as well as deeply appreciative, bringing those historical figures to life. Mrs. Liston's engaging writing will win the hearts of all readers.For more on this topic, please visit the authors website at www.inthewordsofwomen.com.NEW from the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, a video about Henrietta M. and Robert Liston in the United States: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1kQTNScjiA.Also see the new website for digitized images and transcriptions of Mrs. Liston's journals: http://digital.nls.uk/travels-of-henrietta-liston/.