Save Darfur! Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror

From the author of the highly praised Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, here is the first analysis of the crisis in Darfur that considers the events of the last few years within the broad context of the history of Sudan, as well as examines the efficacy of the world’s response to the crisis. Incisive and authoritative, Saviors and Survivors will radically alter our understanding of the crisis in Darfur.

“An incisive and challenging analysis. Framing both Darfur’s war and the ‘Save Darfur’ movement within the paradigm of the West’s historic colonial encounter with Africa, Mahmood Mamdani challenges the reader to reconsider whether Darfur’s crisis is ‘genocide’ warranting foreign military intervention.”—Alex de Waal, Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and author of War in Darfur

“Mamdani traces the path to the Darfur tragedy through its historical and colonial roots to the current situation, where drought and desertification have led to conflict over land among local tribes, rebellion, and finally to the brutal involvement of the forces of the state and to the efforts of the United Nations and others to help the victims and stop the violence. His radical reevaluation of the Darfur problem is a major contribution to understanding and, it is to be hoped, to ending a shocking human disaster.” —Sir Brian Urquhart, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations

Indiana University’s Political Science Department has assigned the book for an African Politics course this fall 2010.

To read a book excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

University of Michigan Selects The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters for World Politics Course

For years, North Korea watchers who speak no Korean have been confidently telling the world what motivates Kim Jong-Il. But in The Cleanest Race, B.R. Myers, a North Korea analyst and contributing editor of the Atlantic Monthly, presents the first full-length study of the North Korean worldview. In a lavishly illustrated work that draws on extensive research into the regime’s domestic propaganda, including films, romance novels and other artifacts of the personality cult, Myers analyzes each of the country’s official myths in turn—from the notion of Koreans’ unique moral purity, to the myth of an America quaking in terror of “the Iron General.” And in a groundbreaking historical section, Myers also traces the origins of this official culture back to the Japanese fascist thought in which North Korea’s first ideologues were schooled. 

University of Michigan has adopted the book for its Introduction to World Politics course this fall. 

“Electrifying… finely argued and brilliantly written… The illustrations in this book are an education in themselves.”—Christopher Hitchens

“Provocative… A fascinating analysis.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

 B.R. Myers Discusses North Korea On National Public Radio:

On Point: “Bill Clinton’s North Korea Mission”

—August 5, 2009 Click here for interview.

On Point: “North Korea: Behind the Curtain”

—June 8, 2009 Click here for interview

Morning Edition: “North Korean Launch Grabs World’s Attention”

—April 6, 2009 Click here for interview

To order an examination copy, click here.

Free Copy Offer to Educators: Be the First to Adopt The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa’s Worst Human Rights Crimes by John Prendergast with Don Cheadle

In their New York Times bestseller, Not On Our Watch, human rights activist John Prendergast and Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle focused the world’s attention on genocide in Sudan by offering readers strategies on how to take action to end the tragedies. Here now is their continued call to action: The Enough Moment : Fighting to End Africa’s Worst Human Rights Crimes (Three Rivers Press; September 2010), an empowering look at how people’s movements and inspired policies can stop genocide, child soldier recruitment, and rape as a war weapon in Africa. 

In The Enough Moment , Prendergast and Cheadle explain how hope, anger, citizen activism, social networking, compassion, celebrities, faith in action, and globalization are all coming together to produce the beginnings of a mass movement against human rights crimes.  

As Prendergast and Cheadle describe, an “Enough Moment” is defined as that time when outrage triggers action and bystanders become “Upstanders,” or people who take action on behalf of others. But can ordinary citizens turn their Enough Moments into instruments of meaningful change? Prendergast and Cheadle say “yes,” illustrating with such examples:

 • A high school student in Chicago started Youth United for Darfur to raise awareness of genocide.

• An eleven-year-old former child soldier in Uganda formed a group of others like him to aid in reconciliation.

• A seventy-eight-year-old retired educator in Seattle founded a coalition of churches and organizations to raise awareness and funds for humanitarian relief.

• A young Darfurian woman founded an association of women journalists that uses radios and phones to warn towns of militia groups in their area.

 In addition to providing action steps, Prendergast and Cheadle also connect with well-known and influential people to discuss how they have been moved to action by their Enough Moments. Interviews in The Enough Moment include:  Madeleine Albright, Dave Eggers, Mia Farrow, and a number of members of Congress.

For readers who hear their Enough Moment calling, and for those who are already involved in the people’s movement, The Enough Moment offers fourteen action steps for change, including contacting Congress, alerting the media, and using social media to organize, to help us become part of the solution. 

 Visit the website: http://www.enoughproject.org/

Educators: To request a FREE examination copy, click here and mention our blog.  Copies are limited.

Outcasts United Joins Another College’s Fall Curriculum

Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town  is the story of a refugee soccer team, a remarkable woman coach and a small southern town in Clarkston, Georgia, turned upside down by the process of refugee resettlement.

Beloit College’s Writing Program has selected the book for its Fall 2009 course on The Long Horizon: Refugees in the United States and the University of Hartford’s Politics & Government Dept. is using it for their Globalization of People course.  Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town  is also a popular common reading selection at several colleges. For a complete list, click here.

“Truly unforgettable, Outcasts United offers a stirring lesson in the power of a single person to transform the lives of many. It’s an incisive window into the world ahead for all of us, where cultural diversity won’t be an ideal or a course requirement or a corporate initiative but a fact of life that has to be wrestled with and reconciled, if never quite resolved.”
—Reza Aslan, author of No God but God

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

For Official Website, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Students at Boston College and Western Oregon University are Reading The Translator by Zaghawa tribesman, Daoud Hari

In 2003, Daoud Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman in northern Darfur, fled his village, which was under attack by Sudanese militiamen. Here is Daoud’s harrowing and life-changing, eyewitness account of the brutal genocide in the Sudan.

Western Oregon University’s Anthropology Dept. will be using the book this summer as well as Boston College’s Sociology Dept which has adopted The Translator: A Memoir for its course named “African World Perspective” this Fall. Zine Magubane, Associate Professor of Sociology, says “I chose this book because The Translator offers American students a superb opportunity to hear about the realities of the Darfur situation through the voice of an African person. The book is both an excellent primer on the political situation in Darfur and a deeply moving personal story that gives students a sophisticated, yet accessible, view into the Darfur conflict.”

We are pleased to say The Translator is also a common reads book selection at Colorado Mountain College and Mars Hill College.

Official Website: www.SaveDarfur.org

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read a book excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

Word of Mouth is Spreading On The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, now Adopted at Several Colleges

In 1951, an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks, stricken with cervical cancer, became an involuntary donor of cells from her cancerous tumor, which were propagated by scientist George Otto Gey to create an immortal cell line for medical research. These cells are now known worldwide as HeLa. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, award-winning science writer Rebecca Skloot brilliantly weaves together the Lacks’s story–past and present–with the story of the birth of bioethics, the story of HeLa cells, and the dark history of experimentation on African Americans. Important, powerful, and compassionate, this is a remarkable work of science and social journalism. 

Since its publication in February 2010, this amazing book has been already been selected for several 2010-2011 Common Reading programs, including Fairmont State University, Grand Valley State University, Honors College at University of Arizona, Johns Hopkins University, Keene State College, Loyola Marymount University (English Dept.), Marian University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Siena Heights University, St. Bonaventure College, Sweet Briar College, University of California, Merced, University of Kansas School of Medicine, University of Wisconsin, Big Reads, Virginia Commonwealth University, and is also being used in several classes at California State University Los Angeles, Fairmont State University, Henderson State University, Ohio University, Old Dominion University, Stockton College, University of Colorado-Boulder, and the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa.

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is an ideal book for classroom discussions in bioethics, history of science, and science journalism. Author Rebecca Skloot does an exceptional job of raising critical issues that should encourage both scholars and students to reevaluate the research decision making process, the way research subjects are treated, and the balance of power in this country as determined by race, economics, and even education. An incredibly readable and smart text that should be a part of countless university discussions.” — Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, and Professor of Journalism, University of Wisconsin-Madison 

“This book not only describes the enormous contributions of Henrietta Lacks, her family and the many physicians and scientists to the history of science  –  it humanizes their contributions. In this way the public owes a debt to Rebecca Skloot for explaining science and its ethical issues in a way that should enlighten and inform. In my mind, she’s written the perfect bioethics book.”– Eric M. Meslin, Ph.D.  Director, Indiana University Center for Bioethics 

“Deftly weaving together history, journalism and biography, Rebecca Skloot’s sensitive account tells of the enduring, deeply personal sacrifice of this African American woman and her family…A stunning illustration of how race, gender and disease intersect to produce a unique form of social vulnerability, this is a poignant, necessary, and brilliant book.”—Alondra Nelson, associate professor of sociology, Columbia University 

Also visit the blog post by Case Western professor, Jacqueline D. Lipton, Professor; Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research; Co-Director of the Center for Law Technology and the Arts; Associate Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center. Click here. 

For a review in Health Affairs Journal, click here.

For Booklist’s Story Behind the Story: Rebecca Skloot’s Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, click here.

Author website: www.rebeccaskloot.com

For more information on the book or author, click here.

Click here to read an excerpt.

Click here to order an examination copy.

Zami A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography Now on the Syllabus at the University of California Santa Barbara

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is a 1982 autobiography by African American poet Audre Lorde. It started a new genre that the author calls biomythography.

“Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.”—Off Our Backs

This past Spring 2010, Zami  was used in a Feminist Studies Course, Women, Representation, and Cultural Production, at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Audre Lorde is also the author of Sister Outsider: Essays & Speechs. For more information on Lorde’s books, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton Vs. Starr Now Being Used in Political Science Course at Carlow University

Ten years after one of the most polarizing political scandals in American history, author Ken Gormley offers an insightful, balanced, and revealing analysis of the events leading up to the impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton. From Ken Starr’s initial Whitewater investigation through the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit to the Monica Lewinsky affair, The Death of American Virtue is a gripping chronicle of an ever-escalating political feeding frenzy. In exclusive interviews, Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal, and many more key players offer candid reflections on that period. Drawing on never-before-released records and documents—including the Justice Department’s internal investigation into Starr, new details concerning the death of Vince Foster, and evidence from lawyers on both sides—Gormley sheds new light on a dark and divisive chapter, the aftereffects of which are still being felt in today’s political climate.

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton Vs. Starr has been selected at Carlow University for its Spring 2010, Introduction to Political Science course.

“Anyone who lived through the improbable sequence of events that led to the impeachment of President Clinton will be riveted by this vivid dissection of a saga of ambition, pride, and raw politics that diminished both a president and his prosecutor.”—LINDA GREENHOUSE, lecturer in law, Yale Law School, and former Supreme Court correspondent, New York Times 

For more information on the book or author, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

James Madison University Adopts Historiography Book Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan

In Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History, the acclaimed author of Paris 1919 and Nixon and Mao reveals lessons and insights from a lifetime of writing and teaching history, about how we live our lives as individuals and nations.

Dangerous Games has been selected at James Madison University for course Twentieth Century World History.

“Reminds readers that history matters…. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the importance of correctly understanding the past.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“MacMillan deftly maneuvers through time [in this] wide-ranging and provocative testament to transparency as the best historical education.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

For more information on the book or author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

A Concise History of the Catholic Church Added to the Curriculum at Providence College

Covering the life of Christ, the election of Pope Benedict XVI, and everything in between, A Concise History of the Catholic Church has been one of the bestselling religious histories of the past two decades and a mainstay for scholars, students, and others looking for a definitive, accessible history of Catholicism.

Providence College’s Development of Western Civilization Program will be using Thomas Bokenkotter’s essential one-volume history of the Catholic Church.

To read a book excerpt, click here.

Order an examination copy here.