August Wilson's Twentieth-Century Cycle Plays: A Reader's Companion
Author: Sanford Sternlicht A short literary guide to one of this countrys greatest African American dramatists, August Wilsons Twentieth-Century Cycle Plays: A Readers Companion will serve a wide range of students, teachers, theater professionals, and theater audiences. Beginning with an account of August Wilsons life, from his impoverished childhood in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to achieving national acclaim, the book introduces the ten-play cycleone for each decade of the twentieth centuryas a whole, explaining Wilsons goals as a playwright: to depict African American life, primarily in Pittsburgh, during the century, illustrating the hardships, the suffering, the desperation, the small victories, the beauty and the bleakness, and the ultimate triumph of a community. Subsequent chapters place each play in the context of its decade by listing and discussing historical events that influenced and comprised the background to the play. For each play there is a general introduction, a plot summary, a description of each character, and an appraisal of the work. The book also discusses August Wilsons non-cycle plays. Clear and accessible, the text enables readers to move into a deeper analytical exploration of the cycle plays.
Author: Louis A. Del Monte
Nanoweapons just might render humanity extinct in the near futurea notion that isfrightening andshockingbut potentially true. In Nanoweapons Louis A. Del Monte describes the most deadly generation of military weapons the world has ever encountered.Withdimensions one-thousandth the diameter of a single strand ofhuman hair, this technology threatens to eradicate humanity as it incites world governments to compete in the deadliest arms race ever. In his insightful and prescient account of this risky and radical technology, Del Monte predicts that nanoweapons will dominate the battlefield of the future and will help determine the superpowers of the twenty-first century. Hetraces the emergence of nanotechnology, discusses the current development of nanoweaponssuch as the mini-nuke, which weighs five pounds and carries the power of one hundred tons of TNTand offersconcrete recommendations, founded in historical precedent, for controlling their proliferation and avoiding human annihilation. Most critically, Nanoweaponsaddresses thequestion: Will it be possible to develop, deploy, and use nanoweapons in warfare without rendering humanity extinct?
Author: By Barbra A. Meek
For many communities around the world, the revitalization or at least the preservation of an indigenous language is a pressing concern. Understanding the issue involves far more than compiling simple usage statistics or documenting the grammar of a tongue--it requires examining the social practices and philosophies that affect indigenous language survival.In presenting the case of Kaska, an endangered language in an Athapascan community in the Yukon, Barbra Meek asserts that language revitalization requires more than just linguistic rehabilitation; it demands a social transformation. The process must mend rips and tears in the social fabric of the language community that result from an enduring colonial history focused on termination. These disjunctures include government policies conflicting with community goals, widely varying teaching methods and generational viewpoints, and even clashing ideologies within the language community.This book provides a detailed investigation of language revitalization based on more than two years of active participation in local language renewal efforts. Each chapter focuses on a different dimension, such as spelling and expertise, conversation and social status, family practices, and bureaucratic involvement in local language choices. Each situation illustrates the balance between the desire for linguistic continuity and the reality of disruption.We Are Our Language reveals the subtle ways in which different conceptions and practices--historical, material, and interactional--can variably affect the state of an indigenous language, and it offers a critical step toward redefining success and achieving revitalization.
Author: Leah Wright Rigueur
Covering more than four decades of American social and political history, The Loneliness of the Black Republican examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials, and politicians, from the era of the New Deal to Ronald Reagans presidential ascent in 1980. Their unique stories reveal African Americans fighting for an alternative economic and civil rights movementeven as the Republican Party appeared increasingly hostile to that very idea. Black party members attempted to influence the direction of conservatismnot to destroy it, but rather to expand the ideology to include black needs and interests. As racial minorities in their political party and as political minorities within their community, black Republicans occupied an irreconcilable positionthey were shunned by African American communities and subordinated by the GOP. In response, black Republicans vocally, and at times viciously, critiqued members of their race and party, in an effort to shape the attitudes and public images of black citizens and the GOP. And yet, there was also a measure of irony to black Republicans loneliness: at various points, factions of the Republican Party, such as the Nixon administration, instituted some of the policies and programs offered by black party members. Whats more, black Republican initiatives, such as the fair housing legislation of senator Edward Brooke, sometimes garnered support from outside the Republican Party, especially among the black press, Democratic officials, and constituents of all races. Moving beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism, black Republicans sought to address African American racial experiences in a distinctly Republican way. The Loneliness of the Black Republican provides a new understanding of the interaction between African Americans and the Republican Party, and the seemingly incongruous intersection of civil rights and American conservatism.
Author: Jan Lambrecht, SJ
Now Available in Paperback!Second Corinthians is often regarded as the most personal of Paul's letters. In this letter Paul more than once fiercely counters the attacks of his opponents. He extensively describes both the quality and circumstances of his apostolic existence: the sufferings he endures, the opposition he encounters, and his continual care for the churches.Second Corinthians is, therefore, highly significant theologically as well as autobiographically. This letter is an especially important document because of Paul's ongoing reflection on his ministry. It is both profound in its content and style for its original audience as well as for today's readers. It is a message that is relevant to Christians today.Jan Lambrecht, SJ, is professor emeritus of New Testament and biblical Greek at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
Author: Joseph B. Glass
American Aliyah (immigration to Palestine) began in the mid-nineteenth century fueled by the desire of American Jews to study Torah and by their wish to live and be buried in the Holy Land. His movement of people-men and women-increased between World War I and II, in direct contrast to European Jewry's desire to immigrate to the United States. Why would American Jews want to leave America, and what characterized their resettlement? From New Zion to Old Zion analyzes the migration of American Jews to Palestine between the two world wars and explores the contribution of these settlers to the building of Palestine. From New Zion to Old Zion draws upon international archival correspondence, newspapers, maps, photographs, interviews, and fieldwork to provide students and scholars of immigration and settlement processes, the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine), and America-Holy Land studies a well-researched portrait of Aliyah.
Author: Rae Beth Gordon
In this examination of the role of ornament in nineteenth-century French literature, Rae Beth Gordon shows that ornament, far from being a simple accessory, raises problems that are at the very heart of aesthetic experience: limits and their transgression, illusion and seduction, pleasure and tension, harmony and confusion, excess and marginality. After placing texts by Nerval, Gautier, Mallarm, Huysmans, and Rachilde within the context of the history and techniques of the decorative arts, she reveals in these works the powerful role played by decorative figurations of syntax, diction, and composition. Gordon's detailed textual analyses yield spatial parallels with specific ornamental configurations (interlace, arabesque, decorative frame, horror vacui, trompe l'oeil). These patterns are then studied in relation to a dynamics of desire. Ornament, taken as the site of desire and illuminated by the theories of Charcot, Clrambault, Freud, Winnicott, and Lacan, highlights important differences between romanticism, symbolism, and decadence. Not only does the author relate ornament to artistic representations of the sublime, the grotesque, and hysteria, but she also reveals that the function of ornament in literature anticipated psychiatric and aesthetic research on decorative form in the fin de sicle.Originally published in 1992.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Raye C. Ringholz
Now expanded to include the story of nuclear testing and its consequences, Uranium Frenzy has become the classic account of the uranium rush that gripped the Colorado Plateau region in the 1950s. Instigated by the U.S. government's need for uranium to fuel its growing atomic weapons program, stimulated by Charlie Steen's lucrative Mi Vida strike in 1952, manned by rookie prospectors from all walks of life, and driven to a fever pitch by penny stock promotions, the boom created a colorful era in the Four Corners region and Salt Lake City (where the stock frenzy was centered) but ultimately went bust. The thrill of those exciting times and the good fortune of some of the miners were countered by the darker aspects of uranium and its uses. Miners were not well informed regarding the dangers of radioactive decay products. Neither the government nor anyone else expended much effort educating them or protecting their health and safety. The effects of exposure to radiation in poorly ventilated mines appeared over time.
Author: Robert Mortimer Marsh
While some writers account for Japan's postwar economic miracle in terms of a distinctively Japanese, traditional model of social organization, the writers of this study consider Japan's technological growth to have been accompanied by convergence toward modernized social organization. The authors test both of these theoretical models. Their data are derived from a nine-month period of observation, analysis of company records, interviews of personnel, and questionnaire responses from production, staff, and managerial employees in three main Japanese firms. Other firms were visited more briefly. The analysis shows that the most distinctively Japanese variables have less causal impact on performance within a firm than do more universal variables such as employee status, sex, and job satisfaction.The authors test both of these theoretical models. Their data are derived from a nine-month period of observation, analysis of company records, interviews of personnel, and questionnaire responses from production, staff, and managerial employees in three main Japanese firms. Other firms were visited more briefly. The analysis shows that the most distinctively Japanese variables have less causal impact on performance within a firm than do more universal variables such as employee status, sex, and job satisfaction.Originally published in 1976.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: edited by Padraig O'Malley, Paul L. Atwood, and Patricia Peterson
Albert Einstein famously remarked that he did not know what weapons would be used in World War III, but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. In this volume, a distinguished group of scholars, government officials, politicians, journalists, and statesmen examine what can be learned from the wars of the twentieth century and how that knowledge might help us as we step ever so perilously into the twenty-first. Following an introduction by Padraig O'Malley, the book is divided into four sections: Understanding the World as We Have Known It; Global Uncertainties; Whose Values? Whose Justice?; and Shaping a New World. The first section reviews what we have learned about war and establishes benchmarks for judging whether that knowledge is being translated into changes in the behavior of our political cultures. It suggests that the world's premier superpower, in its effort to promote Western-style democracy, has taken steps that have inhibited rather than facilitated democratization. The second section examines the war on terror and the concept of global war. From the essays in this section emerges a consensus that democracy as practiced in the West cannot be exported to countries with radically different cultures, traditions, and values. The third section visits the question of means and ends in the context of varying value systems and of theocracy, democracy, and culture. In the final section, the focus shifts to our need for global institutions to maintain order and assist change in the twenty-first century. Although each contributor comes from a different starting point, speaks with a different voice, and has a different ideological perspective, the essays reach startlingly similar conclusions. In sum, they find that the West has not absorbed the lessons from the wars of the last century and is inadequately prepared to meet the new challenges that now confront us. Contributors to the volume include J. Brian Atwood, Susan J. Atwood, John Cooley, Romeo Dallaire, Ramu Damodaran, Valerie Epps, Michael J. Glennon, Stanley Heginbotham, Robert Jackson, Winston Langley, Alfred W. McCoy, Greg Mills, Jonathan Moore, Chris Patten, Gwyn Prins, Jonathan Schell, John Shattuck, Cornelio Sommargua, Brian Urquhart, Stephen Van Evera, and Robert Weiner.