Selected readings shed new light on important events in black history and current developments in Negro protest movements

A deep dive into the emergence and success of independent filmmaking in America A Los Angeles Times Bestseller The most important development in American culture of the last two decades is the emergence of independent cinema as a viable alternative to Hollywood. Indeed, while Hollywood's studios devote much of their time and energy to churning out big-budget, star-studded event movies, a renegade independent cinema that challenges mainstream fare continues to flourish with strong critical support and loyal audiences. Cinema of Outsiders is the first and only comprehensive chronicle of contemporary independent movies from the late 1970s up to the present. From the hip, audacious early works of maverick David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and Spike Lee, to the contemporary Oscar-winning success of indie dynamos, such as the Coen brothers ( Fargo ), Quentin Tarentino ( Pulp Fiction ), and Billy Bob Thornton ( Sling Blade ), Levy describes in a lucid and accessible manner the innovation and diversity of American indies in theme, sensibility, and style. Documenting the socio-economic, political and artistic forces that led to the rise of American independent film, Cinema of Outsiders depicts the pivotal role of indie guru Robert Redford and his Sundance Film Festival in creating a showcase for indies, the function of film schools in supplying talent, and the continuous tension between indies and Hollywood as two distinct industries with their own structure, finance, talent and audience. Levy describes the major cycles in the indie film movement: regional cinema, the New York school of film, African-American, Asian American, gay and lesbian, and movies made by women. Based on exhaustive research of over 1,000 movies made between 1977 and 1999, Levy evaluates some 200 quintessential indies, including Choose Me , Stranger Than Paradise , Blood Simple , Blue Velvet , Desperately Seeking Susan , Slacker , Poison , Reservoir Dogs , Gas Food Lodging , Menace II Society , Clerks , In the Company of Men , Chasing Amy , The Apostle , The Opposite of Sex , and Happiness . Cinema of Outsiders reveals the artistic and political impact of bold and provocative independent movies in displaying the cinema of "outsiders"-the cinema of the "other America."

A devastating expose of U.S. foreign policy which separates the myth of an "international terrorist conspiracy" from the reality.

Dissects the aftermath of the war in Southeast Asia, the refugee problem, the Vietnam/Cambodia conflict and the Pol Pot regime. The companion book to The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Vol. I."[A valuable, carefully documented assessment of Western reporting on post-1975 Indochina. Especially comprehensive in its treatment of Cambodia, it provides a trenchant -- and healthy -- critique of news media coverage that has usually been as tendentious as that dealing with the early years of U.S. military intervention in Indochina."--George Kahin, Cornell University

In the global search for culprits and causes in the rise of terrorism, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold shines a spotlight on a nation many think of as a close ally of the United Saudi Arabia. As he explains in Hatred's How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism , Gold believes that the Saudi government is greatly influenced by the Islamist sect known as Wahhabism and, he explains, that influence has lead to Saudi support of terrorism in the Middle East, Europe, the United States and around the world. The historical portion of Gold's argument, where he traces the emergence of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the changing face of Saudi leadership, is admirably extensive and detailed. His modern research is a little more uneven, relying on statements by various Muslim clergy members, letters to the editors of newspapers, opinion pieces, and other evidence that is rarely damnable. Curiously, mentions of Israel and the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict are much more infrequent than one would expect from an Israeli diplomat and scholar. But regardless of one's opinion of Gold's research or his alarming conclusions, the book offers something not often found in modern political a coherent structure, exhaustive research, and a clear and consistent perspective on the ongoing threat of terrorism. --John Moe

"In the most comprehensive study of political ritual yet written, David I. Kertzer explains why ritual has been and will continue to be an essential part of political life. Weaving together examples from around the world and throughout history, Kertzer shows that the success of all political groups, whether conservative or revolutionary, is linked to their effective use of ritual." --

History of the Cold War

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A fascinating portrait of journalism and the people who make it, told through pieces collected from the incomparable six-decade career of bestselling author and longtime New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin “ The Lede contains profiles . . . that are acknowledged classics of the form and will be studied until A.I. makes hash out of all of us.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD I’ve been writing about the press almost as long as I’ve been in the game. At some point, it occurred to me that disparate pieces from various places in various styles amounted to a picture from multiple angles of what the press has been like over the years since I became a practitioner and an observer. Calvin Trillin has reported serious pieces across America for The New Yorker, covered the civil rights movement in the South for Time, and written comic verse for The Nation . But one of his favorite subjects over the years—a superb fit for his unique combination of reportage and humor—has been his own professional environment: the American press. In The Lede, Trillin gathers his incisive, often hilarious writing on reporting, reporters, and the media world that is their orbit. He writes about a legendary crime reporter in Miami, a swashbuckling New York Times reporter, and an erudite film critic in Dallas who once a week transformed himself from an appreciator of the French nouvelle vague into a crude connoisseur of movies like Mother Riley Meets the Vampire . There are pieces on the House of Lords aspirations of a North American press baron, the paucity of gossip columns in Russia, the embroilment of a weekly newspaper in a missing person case, and the founding of a publication called Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking . Uniting all of this is Trillin’s signature combination of empathy, humor, and graceful prose. The Lede is an unparalleled portrait of one of our fundamental American institutions from a master journalist.

A first hand account of the struggle for Civil rights from 1954-1964.

"Andrea Dworkin's 1981 critique of pornography is an important and urgent document about how the culture consumes and manipulates images of women"--

Bigger than Watergate! Bigger than Iran-Contra! Ten times bigger than both, said one representative. The Benghazi scandal may have been covered up by the White House, but the truth is about to come out. The Real Benghazi Story is a ground-breaking investigative work that finally exposes some of the most significant issues related to the murderous September 11, 2012, attack-information with current national security implications. Investigative journalist and New York Times best-selling author Aaron Klein provides the answers many have longed for from the secretive activities transpiring inside the doomed facility to shocking new details about the withholding of critical protection at the U.S. special mission. Learn about what really happened to Ambassador Chris Stevens that fated night, the central role Hillary Clinton actually played in the scandal, and more! Also answered for the first time is why the State Department hired armed members of the al-Qaeda-linked February 17 Martyrs Brigade to protect the facility. New reasons are revealed for not sending air support or Special Forces during the assault, while extensively probing not only jihadist groups but also possible state actors behind the attack. These are just some of the new details to be revealed in this game-changing book.

Freedom is a concept central to many of the social sciences. This book explores the social production of 'free agents', and the intimate connection between this process and the issues of systemic integration and social control.

The Light of Christ provides an accessible presentation of Catholicism that is grounded in traditional theology, but engaged with a host of contemporary questions or objections. Inspired by the theologies of Iranaeus, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman, and rooted in a post-Vatican II context, Fr. Thomas Joseph White presents major doctrines of the Christian religion in a way that is comprehensible for non-specialists: knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the atonement, the sacraments and the moral life, eschatology and prayer. At the same time, The Light of Christ also addresses topics such as evolution, the modern historical study of Jesus and the Bible, and objections to Catholic moral teaching. Touching on the concerns of contemporary readers, Fr. White examines questions such as whether Christianity is compatible with the findings of the modern sciences, do historical Jesus studies disrupt or confirm the teaching of the faith, and does history confirm the antiquity of Catholic claims. This book serves as an excellent introduction for young professionals with no specialized background in theology who are interested in learning more about Catholicism, or as an introduction to Catholic theology. It will also serve as a helpful text for theology courses in a university context. As Fr. White states in the book’s introduction: “This is a book that offers itself as a companion. I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable.”

Reach Your Zen Moment! The latest edition of The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Buddhism updates one of Alpha Books's most successful books in the religion/spirituality category, providing extensive information on both understanding the teachings and schools of Buddhism and incorporating the tenets of Buddhism into everyday life. It also includes additional information on Buddhism's effect on popular arts and sciences, the continuing relevance of the Dalai Lama, and an annotated bibliography. • With Buddhism as one of America's fastest growing religions, the audience continues to renew itself • Covers all four schools of Buddhism: Zen, Tibetan, Pure Land, and Insight Meditation, which are not in competitors' books • For thousands of years, Buddhism has been a source of inner peace and security for millions

A dictionary of cultural terms, covering a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and exact sciences. Separate chapters are dedicated to American history, politics and geography.

The aim of this book is to provide a succinct, accessible and comprehensive guide to linguistic concepts and names. 'Linguistic' here does not mean the technical terminology of linguistic sciences, but language in a more everyday sense. Terms are drawn from the various applied areas of language study, such as language teaching, speech pathology, stylistics, typography, and lexicography, as well as from core topics such as grammar, figures of speech, and basic phonetics. The dictionary sets out to answer questions people are likely to ask about language, such as 'Which language(s) do they speak in such-a-country' (all the countries of the world are included), and 'How many people speak X?' (several hundred languages are included). There are entries on 'knowledge about language', and 'LINC', and the ongoing developments in corpus compilation (COBUILD, British National Corpus). A great deal of background is given to the language profiles (e.g. early literary history). Pronunciations of language names (and of several other terms) are given. A small number of entries deal with linguistics, in particular the main schools of thought and basic concepts (e. g. competence, morphology). Abbreviations are included. In all, there are almost 2750 entries and there are c. 5000 cross-references, to give readers a wide range of access points to the information. Carefully chosen illustrations show things that cannot easily be expressed in text, such as alphabets. A selection of cartoons reinforces the author's conviction that language study can be fun.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the methods used in social surveys. All the stages of a survey are covered, from the original planning to the drafting of the final report. Throughout, the emphasis is on the underlying principles, with particular attention being given to sampling - a subject which often troubles students and research workers. The book will be of great value to students in social sciences as well as research workers, and people concerned with social surveys in government and the business world.