Tiny Blush of Sunlight is inspired by the true story of a French Hugenot family that emigrated to North Carolina and took slaves with them to Ohio to set them free. The journey begins on two plantations near Charleston, South Carolina and weaves its way through many lives, until it finally reaches Ohio. The story opens a fascinating and compelling window into the antebellum lowcountry. The lives of two slaves, from very different plantations, intersect with the life of a prominent Charleston attorney. Slavery and ambivalence stand trial.
Winner of the International Labor History Award Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world. When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization in the early seventeenth century launched the first global economy, a vast, diverse, and landless workforce was born. These workers crossed national, ethnic, and racial boundaries, as they circulated around the Atlantic world on trade ships and slave ships, from England to Virginia, from Africa to Barbados, and from the Americas back to Europe. Marshaling an impressive range of original research from archives in the Americas and Europe, the authors show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a 'hydra' and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us about our common humanity.
This book exposes how US plutocrats launched Hitler, then recouped Nazi assets to lay the post-war foundations of a modern police state. Fascists won WWII because they ran both sides. Lays bare the tenacious roots of US fascism from robber baron days to Reichstag fire to the WTC atrocity and "Homeland Security", with a blow-by-blow account of the fascist take-over of America's media.
Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's leading novelist, author of The Old Gringo, Terra Nostra and The Death of Artemio Cruz, has produced what is probably the first Third World spy thriller, an action-filled, quick-paced novel of intrigue as contemporary as a headline. The Hydra Head has a constant political reality as backdrop: the permanent tension in the Middle East and the vast new oil resources of Mexico, the setting for a brilliant attempt to portray the diversity of one man's experience.
Why do recent depictions of government secrecy and surveillance so often use images suggesting massive size and scale: gigantic warehouses, remote black sites, numberless security cameras? Drawing on post-War American art, film, television, and fiction, Matthew Potolsky argues that the aesthetic of the sublime provides a privileged window into the nature of modern intelligence, a way of describing the curiously open secret of covert operations. The book tracks the development of the national security sublime from the Cold War to the War on Terror, and places it in a long history of efforts by artists and writers to represent political secrecy.
Follow the road to Marvel's CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR with official adaptations of the smash-hit films IRON MAN 3 and CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER! When the Mandarin launches a series of deadly terror attacks on America, Iron Man must take action! But can Tony Stark handle the pressure when he has his own demons to face? And when Captain America encounters an assassin called the Winter Soldier, he joins with Black Widow and Falcon to uncover a deep-seated conspiracy in their very midst! It's spy versus spy as the fate of the country hangs in the balance! Plus: A single misstep ignites the fuse and pits hero against hero in the opening chapter of the comic-book story that inspired the film! Collecting MARVEL'S CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR PRELUDE #1-4 and INFINITE COMIC #1, and CIVIL WAR (2006) #1.
In the United States, race and police were founded along with a capitalist economy dependent on the enslavement of workers of African descent. Race and Police builds a critical theory of American policing by analyzing a heterodox history of policing, drawn from the historiography of slavery and slave patrols. Beginning by tracing the historical origins of the police mandate in British colonial America, the book shows that the peculiar institution of racialized chattel slavery originated along with a novel, binary conception of race. On one side, for the first time Europeans from various nationalities were united in a single racial category. Inclusion in this category was necessary for citizenship. On the other, Blacks were branded as slaves, cast as social enemies, and assumed to be threats to the social order. The state determined not only that it would administer slavery, but that it would regulate slaves, authorizing the use of violence by agents of the state and white citizens to secure the social order. In doing so, slavery, citizenship, and police mutually informed one another, and together they produced racial capitalism, a working class defined and separated by the color line, and a racial social order. Race and Police corrects the Eurocentrism in the orthodox history of American police and in predominating critical theories of police. That orthodoxy rests on an origin story that begins with Sir Robert Peel and the London Metropolitan Police Service. Predating the Met by more than a century, America’s first police, often called slave patrols, did more than maintain order—it fabricated a racial order. Prior to their creation, all white citizens were conscripted to police all Blacks. Their participation in the coercive control of Blacks gave definition to their whiteness. Targeted as threats to the security of the economy and white society, being policed defined Blacks who, for the first time, were treated as a single racial group. The boundaries of whiteness were first established on the basis of who was required to regulate slaves, given a specific mandate to prevent Black insurrection, a mandate that remains core to the police role to this day.
A voice on late night radio tells you that a fast food joint injects its food with drugs that make men impotent. A colleague asks if you think the FBI was in on 9/11. An alien abductee on the Internet claims extra-terrestrials have planted a microchip in her left buttock. 'Julia Roberts in Porn Scandal' shouts the front page of a gossip mag. A spiritual healer claims he can cure chronic fatigue syndrome with the energizing power of crystals . . . What do you believe? Knowledge Goes Pop examines the popular knowledges that saturate our everyday experience. We make this information and then it shapes the way we see the world. How valid is it when compared to official knowledge and why does such (mis)information cause so much institutional anxiety? Knowledge Goes Pop examines the range of knowledge, from conspiracy theory to plain gossip, and its role and impact in our culture.
“Can you actually find spiritual truths in comicbooks and superhero movies?” Yes, you can! For more than 75 years of comic book history and dozens of gigantic cinematic releases, Superheros have captivated our imagination--filling our senses with heart-pounding adventures, riveting plots, and spectacular special effects—and sometimes they have profound messages woven into them. Often the underlying themes reveal a Judeo-Christian influence, and even when it isn’t intentional, you can still draw deep lessons from them. Whether it’s the self-sacrifice and humility of Captain America and the Hulk’s struggles with anger or the parallels between Superman and Jesus or between Black Widow and a ruthless Bible heroine, your favorite heroes and heroines (and even villains) have much to teach. If you’re a fan of this good vs. evil world, you will love The Superheroes Devotional—featuring 60 interesting, challenging, and encouraging readings. With devotions drawn from dozens of favorite superheroes from both the Marvel and DC Comics universes—well-known names like Captain America and Batman and lesser-known heroes like Shazam and Gambit—each reading includes spiritual lessons relating superheroes to the heroes of the Bible in themes like faith, hope, courage, pride, and power. You’ll also enjoy reading about the history and background of each superhero, shared by author and lifelong fan Ed Strauss. Read on, True Believer, and may you draw inspiration and encouragement from the characters and stories that you know and love from comicbook pages and big screen movies alike.
An intriguing interrogation of America’s long-running obsession with conspiracy theories Why are Americans today so fascinated by Area 51? How did rumors that the AIDS virus originated as a weapon of biowarfare emerge? Why does the Kennedy assassination provoke heated debate over fifty years after the fact, and why did Donald Trump’s birther theories only serve to increase his popularity with voters? The origins of these ideas reveal important facets of American culture and politics. Placing conspiracy thinking at the center of American history, and challenging the knee-jerk dismissal of conspiratorial thought as deluded and often dangerous, Conspiracy Nation provides a wide-ranging survey of conspiracy theories in contemporary America. In the 19th century, inflammatory rhetoric about slave revolts, the well-publicized specter of the black rapist, and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan all worked as conspiracy theories to legitimate an emerging sense of national consciousness based on an ideology of white supremacy – one that still persists today. In our contemporary world, panicked responses to increasing multiculturalism and globalization yield new notions of victimhood and new theories about conspiratorial plans for global domination. Offering up a provocative array of examples, ranging from alien abduction to the novels of DeLillo and Pynchon to Tupac Shakur's "paranoid style," Conspiracy Nation documents and unearths the workings of conspiracy in the contemporary moment. Contributors: Clare Birchall, Jack Bratich, Bridget Brown, Jodi Dean, Ingrid Walker Fields, Douglas Kellner, Peter Knight, Fran Mason, John A. McClure, Timothy Melley, Eithne Quinn, and Skip Willman
