"Written well into mid-life, Songs for a Summons are explorations and observations of a writing life. David Guterson is the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, recipient of the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award, East of the Mountains, Our Lady of the Forest, The Other, and Ed King. Songs for a Summons is his first poetry book."As is true when David Guterson enriches our lives and literature with memorable stories and essays, he is on these pages a poet acutely, even achingly, aware of the beauty and sometimes absurdity of the natural and unnatural forms that surround us. He is awake to the experience of illusion and impermanence, loneliness and suffering. And always in these well-crafted works, where language performs at its highest level, he is awake to the possibilities of love, gratitude, redemption, and the importance of self-acceptance. With each elegant poem in Songs For A Summons, Guterson liberates our seeing, our senses, and beckons us to live more fully, more authentically, more deeply."-Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage"--

The only comprehensive and up-to-date look at Reform Judaism, this book analyzes the forces currently challenging the Reform movement, now the largest Jewish denomination in the United States. To distinguish itself from Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, the Reform movement tries to be an egalitarian, open, and innovative version of the faith true to the spirit of the tradition but nonetheless fully compatible with modern secular life. Promoting itself in this way, Reform Judaism has been tremendously successful in recruiting a variety of people—intermarried families, feminists, gays and lesbians, and interracial families among others—who resist more traditional forms of worship. As an unintended result of this success, the movement now struggles with an identity crisis brought on by its liberal theology, which teaches that each Jew is free to practice Judaism more or less as he or she pleases. In the absence of the authority that comes from a theology based on a commanding, all-powerful God, can Reform Judaism continue to thrive? Can it be broadly inclusive and still be uniquely and authentically Jewish? Taking this question as his point of departure, Dana Evan Kaplan provides a broad overview of the American Reform movement and its history, theology, and politics. He then takes a hard look at the challenges the movement faces as it attempts to reinvent itself in the new millennium. In so doing, Kaplan gives the reader a sense of where Reform Judaism has come from, where it stands on the major issues, and where it may be going. Addressing the issues that have confronted the movement—including the ordination of women, acceptance of homosexuality, the problem of assimilation, the question of rabbinic officiation at intermarriages, the struggle for acceptance in Israel, and Jewish education and others—Kaplan sheds light on the connection between Reform ideology and cultural realities. He unflinchingly, yet optimistically, assesses the movement's future and cautions that stormy weather may be ahead.

In this definitive history of the evolution of the Com- munist Party in America--from its early background through its founding in 1919 to its emergence as a legal entity in the 1920s--Theodore Draper traces the native and foreign strains that comprised the party. He emphasizes its shifting policies and secrets as well as its open activities. He makes clear how the party in its infancy "was transformed from a new expression of American radicalism to the American appendage of a Russian revolutionary power," a fact that Draper develops in his succeeding volume, American Communism and Soviet Russia. In his special, prescient way, Theodore Draper himself had the final words on American Communism: "It is like a museum of radical politics. In its various stages, it has virtually been all things to all men... There are many ways of trying to understand such a movement, but the first task is historical. In some respects, there is no other way to understand it, or at least to avoid seriously misunderstanding it. Every other approach tends to be static, one-sided or unbalanced." Draper correctly notes that the formative period of the American Communist movement has remained a largely untold and even unknown story. In part, the reasons for this are that the Communist movement, although a child of the West, grew to power in the Soviet East. But Draper rescues this chapter with deep appreciation for the fact that communism was not something that happened just in Russia, but also in the United States. This is a must read for scholars and laypersons alike. This volume is conceived as an independent and self-contained study of the American Communist movement. Draper correctly notes that the formative period is largely untold and even unknown. In part, the reasons for this are that the Communist movement, although a child of the West, grew to power in the Soviet East. Draper appreciates the fact that communism was not something that happened only in Russia, but also took place in the United States. That experience is the focus of this volume.

One of the most elite educational institutions in the world, the Air Force Academy has, from its inception, attracted the best and the brightest, producing leaders not only in the military but throughout American society. In recent years, however, the Academy has also been producing a cadre of zealous evangelical Christians intent on creating a fundamentalist power base at the highest levels of our country. With God on Our Side is shocking exposé of life inside the United States Air Force Academy and the systematic program of indoctrination sanctioned, coordinated, and carried out by fundamentalist Christians within the U.S. military. It is also the story of Michael L. Weinstein, a proud Academy graduate and the father of two graduates and a current cadet, who single-handedly brought to light the evangelicals' utter disregard of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state that is so essential to the nation's military mission. Weinstein's war would pit him and his small band of fellow graduates, cadets, and concerned citizens against a program of Christian fundamentalist indoctrination that could transform our fighting men and women into "right-thinking" warriors more befitting a theocracy. In the process, he would come face to face with religious bigotry and at its most extreme and fight an unrelenting battle to save his beloved Academy, the ideals it stood for, and the very future of the country. An important book at a critical time in our nation's history, With God on Our Side is the story of one man's courageous struggle to thwart a creeping evangelism permeating America's military and to prevent a taxpayer-funded theocracy in which only the true believers have power.

In this fourth edition of his celebrated study of Faulkner, Irving Howe analyzes all of the great author's works, emphasizing the themes that run throughout the novels and stories. "The scheme of my book is simple," Mr. Howe writes. "First, I have tried to say what Faulkner's work is `about,' to report on the social and moral themes in his books; and then I have tried to analyze and evaluate the more important novels." Anyone who has enjoyed the special flavor of Faulkner's writing will appreciate Mr. Howe's careful analysis, and the student of twentieth-century American literature will gain new perspective and insight. Mr.Howe successfully portrays the intimate connection between Faulkner's fiction and the emotional and psychic history of the South without slighting the universality that makes him one of America's greatest writers. "Mr. Howe is a shrewd critic, and he writes of Faulkner's achievements as a practicing novelist with a wary respect. He has a good many observations to make that should help readers in going through the novels.”―Alfred Kazin, New York Times.

The time has come to reform philosophy, says Hilary Putnam, one of America's great philosophers. He calls upon philosophers to attend to the gap between the present condition of their subject and the human aspirations that philosophy should and once did claim to represent. Putnam's goal is to embed philosophy in social life. The first part of this book is dedicated to metaphysical questions. Putnam rejects the contemporary metaphysics that insists on describing both the mind and the world from a God's-eye view. In its place he argues for pluralism, for a philosophy that is not a closed systematic method but a human practice connected to real life. Philosophy has a task, to be sure, but it is not to provide an inventory of the basic furniture of the universe or to separate reality in itself from our own projections. Putnam makes it clear that science is not in the business of describing a ready-made world, and philosophy should not be in that business either. The author moves on to show that the larger human context in which science matters is a world of values animated by ethics and aesthetic judgments. No adequate philosophy should try to explain away ethical facts. The dimension of history is added in the third part of the book. Here Putnam takes up a set of American philosophers, some firmly within and others outside the canon of analytic philosophy, such as William James and C.S. Peirce, and he explores the pragmatist contribution to philosophy from James to Quine and Goodman. This book connects issues in metaphysics with cultural and literary issues and argues that the collapse of philosophical realism does not entail a fall into the abyss of relativism and postmodern skepticism. It is aimed primarily at philosophers but should appeal to a wide range of humanists and social scientists. --taken from Amazon.com

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY FICTION (POST C 1945). The world is a bewildering place and we're ill-equipped to deal with it. From the horrors of childhood to the vagaries of old age, from confused people to humiliated animals, we're all just trying - and often failing - to keep it together. How carefully should you answer when asked what you'd take to a desert island? What do you do if your parents are reading your diary? How useful is a Swiss Army Knife? And what's A Brief History of Time really about? Armed with a sharp eye for the absurd and an overwhelming sense of doom, Simon Rich explores the ridiculousness of our everyday lives, from the most minute of anxieties to one of life's biggest questions: Does God really have a plan for us? Yes, it turns out. Now if only He could remember what it was ...

Barack Obama swept into office in 2008, capitalizing on his fresh and compelling political persona, the appeal of his "Hope and Change" campaign, the pre-election financial crisis, and a wave of popular discontent with his predecessor. The nation's first African-American president stirred unusually high expectations, and his first term saw the passage of a substantial economic stimulus package, a large-scale expansion of financial regulation, a drawdown in Iraq, and his signature health care reform. But a stagnant economy persisted. His personal popularity had no effect on the persistent disapproval of his program. The Democrats suffered a severe electoral setback in the 2010 Congressional election. But Obama's exceptional campaign organization, his strong personal appeal, and a weak Republican opponent won him a second term in 2012. Now his presidency is in its final stage. In Obama's Time, eminent historian Morton Keller has written the first historical assessment of Barack Obama's presidency. Drawing on a lifetime of scholarship on American history and politics, Keller examines Obama's presidential persona and governing style, his domestic and foreign policies, and his place in the broader history of American politics. Obama is deeply committed to active federal government, in the tradition of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. But his ambitions have been tempered by the heavy weight of existing institutions and past precedents, strong Republican opposition, and unforeseen events. Keller concludes that this is a time when the centralized bureaucratic state faces a deep crisis of legitimacy. He ascribes the intense party polarization to a political culture in which the media, advocacy groups, and ideologically-driven donors have outsize influence. Historians will continue to debate the Obama presidency for decades to come. Keller's account of how Obama governed, the larger political context in which he functioned, and why he was unable to close the gap between expectations and reality, will be invaluable to that debate.

"Where did they all go?" Sixteen-year-old orphan William Wythers, is eager to try life in the New World. He and the other settlers face an arduous voyage and difficult months ahead on Roanoke Island, off the coast of Virginia. Yet there is a wonderful freedom in defining the rules for this new world in America. And when William falls in love with a young Native American woman, it seems that life is going to be happy after all. But when John White arrives from England with fresh supplies for the settlement, not a single person remains. Who knows what happened? An unsolved mystery in American history comes brilliantly alive in Sonia Levitin's historical novel about the lost colony in Roanoke.

"It's striking how many of the presidents Americans venerate--Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, to name a few--oversaw some of the republic's bloodiest years. Perhaps it's because they looked out for important political causes. Or maybe they just looked out for themselves. This revealing and entertaining book puts some of America's greatest leaders under the microscope, showing how their calls for war, usually remembered as brave and noble, were in fact selfish and convenient. In every case, our presidents chose personal gain over national interest while loudly evoking justice and freedom. The result is an eye-opening retelling of American history, and a call for reforms that may make the future better. In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith show that even leaders who proclaim the loftiest of intentions have concerns and motives that are far less pure than we might like. You'll never look at politics the same way again"--

Mordecai M. Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, was the most influential and controversial radical Jewish thinker in the twentieth century. This book follows Kaplan from his earliest days as a member the New York Orthodox community, through his period of private estrangement, into his public divorce from Orthodoxy and ultimately through his many decades as reconstructionism's leader. The book is also a social history of American Orthodoxy and American Judaism over the last century.

A dedicated New York City female judge, Tory Parker, with a tangled emotional life. A ruthless South American narcoterrorist with a history of killing judges who threaten his enterprise. His baby brother, now facing a trial in Tory's courtroom. A string of young Latin American girls found dead—after vicious sexual abuse—in Washington, DC, and one who manages to survive—and the secrets she knows could implode the United States justice system. This collaboration brings together the experiences and talents of Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder, author of the memoir 25 to Life, and Matthew Hall, author of the thrillers Nightmare Logic and The Art of Breaking Glass. In real life, Judge Crocker Snyder received so many death threats connected to high-level drug cases in her New York City courtroom that she had 24/7 protection from the NYPD for many years. Matthew Hall's thrillers have been translated into 13 languages.

In How Few Remain, Harry Turtledove set the stage for his alternate history of World War I. Now, with The Great War: American Front, he carries this epic into the early twentieth century in a re-imagining of the fateful war that hurtled humanity into the modern age. Envision a divided America - one camp led by Theodore Roosevelt, the other by Woodrow Wilson - in the most explosive conflict humankind has seen, where global war is waged with sophisticated weaponry on American soil for the first time in history. When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered the fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their allies, Britain and France. But it soon became clear to both sides that this fight would be different - that war itself would never be the same again. As President Theodore Roosevelt rallied the diverse ethnic groups of the northern states - Irish and Italians, Mormons and Jews - Confederate President Woodrow Wilson struggled to hold together a nation still beset by ignorance, prejudice, and class divisions. And as the war raged on, southern blacks, oppressed for generations, found themselves fatefully drawn toward a climactic confrontation.

Written in rivetings fashion by the coauthors of The Secret War Against the Jews, Unholy Trinity tells one of the darkest tales of World War II. After the war had ended, fearing a surge of Soviet growth, the Papacy entered into an espionage alliance with British and American intelligence agents. Subsuming justice to the nascent Cold War ideology, these three powers ferreted Nazi criminals out of Europe so that they could be used in the supposedly greater fight against Communism. The Vatica's Nazi smuggling network was penetrated by Prince Anton Turkul, the great Soviet double agent who turned the operations into a sting for his masters in the Kremlin. Unholy Trinity exposes Turkul's "Red Nazi" operation for the first time and shows how Kim Philby, the infamous British-Soviet double agent, and his network were nearly sacrificed to preserve Turkul's Vatican operation. Exploring the Vatican's role in aiding Nazi criminals to escape punishment for their crimes, this book, originally published in 1991, first revealed the Vatican--Swiss bank connection to Nazi gold and documented the hidden links to Western investors in Nazi Germany. Since 1991, major revelations about the role of Swiss banks have confirmed Unholy Trinity's expose of the flight of the Nazi's stolen treasures; the new introduction and new final chapters, written by Aarons and Loftus for this edition, bring the book completely up to date and show how the media have missed the vital Vatican connection in the Swiss-bank story. Among other things, the authors demonstrage that U.S. and British code-breakers were fully aware of the Holocaust as early as 1941 but lied to the Western press; that the code-breakers bugged the Swiss banks and then buried secrets of Nazi gold transfers to protect U.S. intelligence chief Allen Dulles; and that the Australian, Brisih, and Canadian governments are still waging a campaign to keep their citizens ignorant about the Nazi war criminals living among them. Covers all these topics and more, Unholy Trinity is the definitive history of a series of profoundly disturbing cover-ups involing the Holy See, Allen Dulles, the Swiss banks, and the remnants of the Third Reich.

Terrorist attacks across Western Europe have provoked a wave of extreme, politicised Islamophobia. American politicians have made it virtually impossible for Syrian refugees to be resettled, Germany?s once-open doors are closing fast and even a progressive beacon like Denmark is now seizing the assets of refugees at its border. This climate has already helped propel Donald Trump to the White House, endangered Angela Merkel?s hopes of re-election in Germany and put Marine Le Pen within striking distance of the Élysée Palace. 0'Go Back to Where You Came From' explains how we got here and why the new right has grown so strong in countries that have historically been defenders of human rights and models of tolerance. 0By combining narrative history, on-the-ground reportage and interviews with the rising stars of the new right and the intellectuals who have enabled them, Polakow-Suransky shows how xenophobia went mainstream and the politicians embracing it rebranded themselves as defenders of western liberal values to reshape the political landscape.

The most powerful case against the American central bank ever written. This work begins with a mini-treatment of money and banking theory, and then plunges right in with the real history of the Federal Reserve System. Rothbard covers the struggle between competing elites and how they converged with the Fed. Rothbard provides a succinct account of the origins of money, showing how money must originate from a commodity. Banking originated from goldsmiths, who issued warehouse receipts for gold deposited with them. From this a fractional reserve system developed, inherently prone to monetary expansion and panic. In the late nineteenth century, a movement toward bank centralization arose among both "progressives" and bankers, the latter eager to increase their profits. From these plans, the Federal Reserve System developed. Rothbard shows the dominate influence of the banking House of Morgan at the Fed's inception. During the New Deal, Rockefeller interests took first place in influence, with the Morgan interests reduced to a subordinate though still potent role. The book concludes with an account of the Fed's role in causing inflation and the business cycle. Abolition of this nefarious agency must be part of any agenda for genuine financial reform.

Chinese (mainland and Taiwan), European, Japanese, Canadian, and North American scholars address a subject of increasing interest in modern Chinese and world history: the emergence of a modern citizenry. While much attention has focused to date on the rise of the modern Chinese nation, little or none has been directed at the important concomitant element of a politically active "citizenry" and what that might mean in a Chinese context. After a detailed introduction by the editors on this theme in Western and East Asian theory and practice, each essay examines a thinker or group of thinkers from the crucial transition period in modern China, 1890-1920, and assesses their views on how China might forge a modern society with a participatory political citizenry.

Drawn to an image of her great-grandfather's ornately carved cane, scholar Elisa New embarked on a journey to discover the origins of her precious family heirloom. Treading back across the paths of her ancestors, she travels from Baltimore to the Baltic to London in order to find and understand an immigrant world profoundly affected by modern German culture, from the Enlightenment through the Holocaust. Deeply ambitious in its narrative sweep, Jacob's Cane captures the rich texture of life on several continents as New's family searches to establish itself in the tobacco trade. A fascinating history of one family's story of progress, innovation, and struggle, Jacob's Cane will change the way we think about the Jewish American experience.

An unsparing, incisive, yet ultimately hopeful look at how we can shed the American obsession with self-reliance that has made us less healthy, less secure, and less fulfilled The promise that you can "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is central to the story of the American Dream. It's the belief that if you work hard and rely on your own resources, you will eventually succeed. However, time and again we have seen how this foundational myth, with its emphasis on individual determination, brittle self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment, does not help us. Instead, as income inequality rises around us, we are left with shame and self-blame for our condition. Acclaimed journalist Alissa Quart argues that at the heart of our suffering is a do-it-yourself ethos, the misplaced belief in our own independence and the conviction that we must rely on ourselves alone. Looking at a range of delusions and half solutions--from "grit" to the false Horatio Alger story to the rise of GoFundMe--Quart reveals how we have been steered away from robust social programs that would address the root causes of our problems. Meanwhile, the responsibility for survival has been shifted onto the backs of ordinary people, burdening generations with debt instead of providing the social safety net we so desperately need. Insightful, sharply argued, and characterized by Quart's lively writing and deep reporting, and for fans of Evicted and Nickel and Dimed, Bootstrapped is a powerful examination of what ails us at a societal level and a plan for how we can free ourselves from these self-defeating narratives.

Traces the life of the American novelist from her childhood in the newly settled prairies of Nebraska through her years as a journalist, editor, and teacher, and examines the relationship between what she wrote and who she was.