Identities For Life And Death: Can We Save Us From Our Toxically-Storied Selves?

Identities For Life And Death: Can We Save Us From Our Toxically-Storied Selves? Review

See more picture

Identities For Life And Death: Can We Save Us From Our Toxically-Storied Selves? Feature

This book is all about stories. The stories that shape our identities and how those identities shape our destinies for better or worse, for good or evil, in humanizing or dehumanizing ways. Working from the Shakespearian metaphor, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players" Pellegrini argues that only by understanding how our storied selves develop can we acquire the tools to modify the roles they dictate for us to play on the stage in the theater of real life. The author deconstructs a wide variety of what he calls "toxic" dehumanizing, death-oriented self-scripts as well as "creative" humanizing, life-oriented narratives of both individuals and groups. Following the Native American folklore parable of two wolves engaged in mortal combat within us, one good the other evil, the fundamental premise here is that our identity determines which of our inner wolves we feed and thus, which of them will prevail. Pellegrini maintains that what's at stake in this battle between humanity's collective inner wolves is not just the quality but the very survival of life on earth. From this perspective, as individual and group selves are humanizingly or dehumanizingly narratized, so shall life be impacted throughout the world. To advance the cause of "detoxifying" identities in our globalized society, the author presents a rationale and program for an international grass roots social movement aimed at achieving a universal sense of belongingness to a "global life system"

Check price now

Rerate Products

Customer Review

20th Century Pop Culture

20th Century Pop Culture Review

See more picture

20th Century Pop Culture Feature

The 20th century will be remembered for many things -- not least as the era in which American popular culture evolved to take a hold on the world. Written by a leading pop culture expert, the book charts the ebb arid flow of the most exciting cultural trends of the last 100 years, beginning with the birth of popular culture -- the first moving pictures and movie stars, the first mass-produced goods, the first dance crazes -- and leads the reader on a journey through the century as each of the various elements burgeoned, and developed, to become a massive influence on all aspects of 20th-century life. The various strands of pop culture are chronicled on a year-by-year basis, providing a diary of modern history from a unique standpoint. Significant news events of the day are also examined, with explanations of how they helped shape America, and the rest of the world.

Covering everything from ragtime to rap, from Woodstock to the worldwide web, from Sinatra to South Park, and from pogo sticks to Playstation, Twentieth-century Pop Culture is as fast-moving, colorful, and varied as the century it covers.

Check price now

Rerate Products

Customer Review

Malice in Wonderland: The Bush Junta From 2000-Present

Malice in Wonderland: The Bush Junta From 2000-Present Review

See more picture

Malice in Wonderland: The Bush Junta From 2000-Present Feature

When I sat down to write this book, it was not an attempt to create a renowned literary work, nor was it about money or profit. I had become deeply saddened and angered, to the verge of outrage, due to the venal actions of my (elected?) government. This book speaks to the lies, hypocrisy and nefarious activities of this Bush bastard and his "colleagues-in-crime". I have no political affiliation per se. This is not about "Right" or "Left" -in this book I speak to right and wrong! This man (now there's an oxymoron) and his cronies have come to us with God on their lips and blood on their hands. I only have hopes in awakening the sleeping apathetic and complacent.

Check price now

Rerate Products

Customer Review

Stuck In The Sixties

Stuck In The Sixties Review

See more picture

Stuck In The Sixties Feature

Check price now

Rerate Products

Customer Review

...Always a Fan: True Stories from a Life in Science Fiction

...Always a Fan: True Stories from a Life in Science Fiction Review

See more picture

...Always a Fan: True Stories from a Life in Science Fiction Feature

Mike Resnick's second collection of essays, anecdotes, speeches, and convention reports (not to mention lists and obituaries), written for science fiction fan magazines, includes topics as diverse as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Teddy Roosevelt, My Most Memorable Collecting Experience, Where Do You Get Those Crazy (Novel) Ideas?, Bathrooms I Have Known, and much more.

Check price now

Rerate Products

Customer Review

A Time to Run: A Novel

A Time to Run: A Novel Review

See more picture

A Time to Run: A Novel Feature

Written with a true insider's perspective, A Time to Run is the remarkable literary debut of United States Senator Barbara Boxer, one of the most admired and respected figures on the political scene. Senator Boxer, writing with Mary-Rose Hayes, tells an exciting tale of friendship and betrayal, idealism and pragmatism, in-fighting and public spin. The novel follows Ellen Fines from her days as a college student through romantic entanglements and a difficult marriage to a rising political star. When her husband is killed in a car accident during his campaign for the Senate, Ellen assumes his candidacy and achieves an upset victory over a political machine. On the eve of a crucial vote, past and public worlds collide when Ellen's former lover, now a journalist with strong right-wing connections, gives her sensitive documents that could either make or break her career. From hideaways deep under the U.S. Capitol to wealthy southern California ranches to the political unrest on the streets of Berkeley, A Time to Run is a great read, and a fascinating, up-close story of power and trust.

Check price now

Rerate Products

Customer Review

Altered States: America Since the Sixties (Reaktion Books

Altered States: America Since the Sixties (Reaktion Books Review

See more picture

Altered States: America Since the Sixties (Reaktion Books Feature

Red states versus blue states. Metro versus retro. North or South, East or West. Pundits, politicians, and social scientists love to carve out categories in an attempt to make sense of political and social divisions that run through the American landscape. As the home of nearly 300 million people spread over approximately 3.7 million square miles of earth, the United States poses a monumental challenge to all who try to grapple with its rich and immensely complex physical and social geography. Acclaimed British historian Jeremy Black tackles this challenge through a literal and metaphorical road trip across America’s physical and historical landscapes, analyzing the ways that events in American history and culture since 1960 have remade the geography and demographics of America. 

Black works from the startling premise that the United States is a continent pretending to be a country. He examines the cultural clashes—and the tense harmony—between the numerous regional cultures uneasily contained within the United States’ wide bounds. Suburban sprawl, the triumph of consumerism, the war over health care, immigration, and Christian evangelicalism all play a part in these pages, as Black unravels the tangled web of American life during the past forty-five years. He locates such tensions in the tug-of-war between the unitary and divisive pressures that have always defined the character of American government, and in the alternating rise and fall of individualism and conformity in American society as well.  Black also has some telling new reflections on America’s role abroad, from Nixon’s Vietnam to George W. Bush's Iraq.

Drawing on travels from Virginia to California to Alaska, Black deftly reveals in Altered States the less-examined aspects of American culture as they are manifested in its diverse peoples and landscapes from coast to coast.

Check price now

Rerate Products

Customer Review