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.

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.

Another College Joins the List of Adoptions for Tracy Kidder’s Acclaimed Mountains Beyond Mountains

 Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, a perennial favorite book used in colleges and common reading programs, has recently been selected at Cornell University, along with more than 100 other colleges and high schools since its publication. This compelling and inspiring book shows how one person can work wonders. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man, Dr. Paul Farmer, who loves the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it. “Mountains Beyond Mountains unfolds with a force of gathering revelation,” says Annie Dillard, and Jonathan Harr notes, “[Paul Farmer] wants to change the world. Certainly this luminous and powerful book will change the way you see it.”

“[A] masterpiece . . . an astonishing book that will leave you questioning your own life and political views . . . Kidder opens a window into Farmer’s soul, letting the reader peek in and see what truly makes the good doctor tick.”—USA Today

For a list of colleges that have selected Mountains Beyond Mountains, click here.

To read a book excerpt, click here.

Strength In What Remains is Tracy Kidder’s newest book.  To watch the book’s trailer, click here.

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

Author Website: www.tracykidder.com/

Order an exam copy 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.

Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia Added to Course Syllabi at the University of Colorado

According to acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, the new Russia is marching in an alarming direction under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. Emboldened by escalating oil wealth as well as newfound prominence as a world power, Russia has veered back toward the authoritarian roots planted in Imperial/Czarist times and firmly established during the Soviet era. Though Russia has a new president, Dmitri Medvedev, Putin remains in control, endangering the democratic reforms of the post-Soviet order. Now, in Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia , LeVine provides a penetrating account of modern Russia under the repressive rule of an all-powerful autocrat. LeVine, who lived in and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, portrays the growth of a “culture of death”—from targeted assassinations of the state’s enemies to the Kremlin’s indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered. Drawing on new interviews with eyewitnesses and the families of victims, LeVine documents the bloodshed that has stained Putin’s two terms as president. 

Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia will be used in a Political Science course at the University of Colorado this Fall.  Get an inside look at the Russian leader’s autocratic regime and his turn away from the West.  Click here to read an article from BusinessWeek.

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

To order an examination copy, click here.

Author and Yale Professor Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography Teaches His Book at Yale University

“…[T]he best biography ever written about the U.S. Constitution….”

So said Harvard University professor Laurence H. Tribe of Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography.  

We have just learned that Professor Amar will be teaching his book this Fall in his large Constitutional Law course at Yale University.  Lucky students!

“I was about to describe America’s Constitution as the best biography ever written about the U.S. Constitution  — until it occurred to me that it’s the only real biography of that remarkable document. As with the gaggle of myopic elephant attendants each of whom sees and strokes only one small part of the whole, many have written about some part of the Constitution or its history, or about the Constitution as seen from the perspective of one branch (usually, the judiciary), but only Yale Law School’s justly legendary Akhil Amar has undertaken to tell the story of the Constitution as a whole. And what a story he tells!  What David McCullough is to John Adams, what Walter Isaacson is to Benjamin Franklin, Akhil Amar is to the Constitution of the United States. Marvelously readable and breathtakingly informative, Amar’s biography of our nation’s founding document fills a huge void  — and fills it brilliantly.”
–Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor Harvard University

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

Order an examination copy here.

Reza Aslan’s No god but God on the Curriculum at the University of Georgia

An authoritative study of the Islamic faith in relation to the other world religions, Reza Aslan’s No god but God: Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam sheds new light on its origins and history, from the social reformation role of Muhammad to the impact of fundamentalism and terrorism on Islam.

This Fall, the University of Georgia will be teaching Reza Aslan’s No god but God: Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. No god but God, has been translated into thirteen languages and was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. Aslan is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror.

“An eloquent, erudite paean to Islam in all of its complicated glory.”–Los Angeles Times Book Review

Official Website: www.rezaaslan.com/

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

To read an excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

Bethel University Takes Change We Can Believe In for Political Science Course

Change We Can Believe In outlines Barack Obama’s vision for America and includes his 7 key speeches from the 2008 Presidential campaign. It contains his bold and specific ideas about how to fix the economy; how to make health care affordable and accessible; and how to keep the country safe in a dangerous world.

Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s Promise will be used at Bethel University this fall for course on American Political Ideologies. 

Order an examination copy here.