With rapid commercialization, a booming urban economy, and the relaxation of state migratory policies, over 100 million peasants, known as China's "floating population," have streamed into large cities seeking employment and a better life. This book traces the profound transformation this massive flow of rural migrants has caused as it challenges Chinese socialist modes of state control.
Michael Casey, a monk and scholar who has been publishing his wise teachings on the Rule of St. Benedict for decades, turns to the particular Benedictine values that he considers most urgent for Christians to incorporate into their lives today. Eloquent and incisive, Casey invites readers to accept that gospel living - seen in the light of the Rule - involves accepting the challenge of being different from the secular culture around us. He encourages readers to set clear goals and objectives, to be honest about the practical ways in which priorities may have to change to meet these goals, and to have the courage to implement these changes both daily and for the future. Casey presents thoughtful reflections on the beliefs and values of asceticism, silence, leisure, reading, chastity, and poverty - putting these traditional Benedictine values into the context of modern life and the spiritual aspirations of people today. Strangers to the City is a book for all who are interested in learning more about the dynamics of spiritual growth from the monastic experience.
In cities throughout Africa, local inhabitants live alongside large populations of "strangers." Bruce Whitehouse explores the condition of strangerhood for residents who have come from the West African Sahel to settle in Brazzaville, Congo. Whitehouse considers how these migrants live simultaneously inside and outside of Congolese society as merchants, as Muslims in a predominantly non-Muslim society, and as parents seeking to instill in their children the customs of their communities of origin. Migrants and Strangers in an African City challenges Pan-Africanist ideas of transnationalism and diaspora in today's globalized world.
In City of Strangers, Andrew M. Gardner explores the everyday experiences of workers from India who have migrated to the Bahrain and the sponsorship system, the kafala, under which they labor and upon which they depend for continued employment.
Cities of Strangers illuminates life in European towns and cities as it was for the settled, and for the 'strangers' or newcomers who joined them between 1000 and 1500. Some city-states enjoyed considerable autonomy which allowed them to legislate on how newcomers might settle and become citizens in support of a common good. Such communities invited bankers, merchants, physicians, notaries and judges to settle and help produce good urban living. Dynastic rulers also shaped immigration, often inviting groups from afar to settle and help their cities flourish. All cities accommodated a great deal of difference - of language, religion, occupation - in shared spaces, regulated by law. When this benign cycle broke down around 1350 with demographic crisis and repeated mortality, less tolerant and more authoritarian attitudes emerged, resulting in violent expulsions of even long-settled groups. Tracing the development of urban institutions and using a wide range of sources from across Europe, Miri Rubin recreates a complex picture of urban life for settled and migrant communities over the course of five centuries, and offers an innovative vantage point on Europe's past with insights for its present.
Garda Sergeant Stefan Gillespie is sent to America to bring a killer to justice, but his mission soon becomes part of an increasingly personal struggle. A chance encounter with an old friend draws him deep into a chilling network of conspiracy, espionage and terror. He becomes more involved than he should and discovers that the war that is looming in Europe is already being played out here on the streets, with deadly consequences. In this time when people must make a stand for what they believe in, the stakes for Stefan Gillespie, and everything he holds dear, couldn't be higher.
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A “captivating” (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo—the city that would become Tokyo—and a portrait of a city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces—and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval—she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak. With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate. Tsuneno’s life provides a window into 19th-century Japanese culture—and a rare view of an extraordinary woman who sacrificed her family and her reputation to make a new life for herself, in defiance of social conventions. “A compelling story, traced with meticulous detail and told with exquisite sympathy” (The Wall Street Journal), Stranger in the Shogun’s City is “a vivid, polyphonic portrait of life in 19th-century Japan [that] evokes the Shogun era with panache and insight” (National Review of Books).
Strangers in the West is the never before told story about the Syrian/Lebanese immigrants who, beginning in 1880, settled on the lower west side of Manhattan. Coming from what was then known as "Greater Syria," these immigrants gathered near the Battery where they disembarked after their long journey from the Middle East. Settling in tenements recently abandoned by Irish immigrants, these recent arrivals to the New World founded an Arabic-speaking enclave just south of the future site of the World Trade Center. They opened Syrian restaurants, half a dozen Arabic-language newspapers, oriental merchandise and food shops, and four Syrian churches. They capitalized on the orientalist craze sweeping the United States by opening Turkish smoking parlors, presenting belly dancers on vaudeville stages, and performing across the country in native costume. Peddlers and merchants, midwives and doctors, priests and journalists, belly dancers and impresarios--all were part of the small community in its first 20 years. This is their story.
