From the renowned author of The African Trilogy, a political satire about an unnamed African country navigating a path between violence and corruption As Minister for Culture, former school teacher M. A. Nanga is a man of the people, as cynical as he is charming, and a roguish opportunist. When Odili, an idealistic young teacher, visits his former instructor at the ministry, the division between them is vast. But in the eat-and-let-eat atmosphere, Odili's idealism soon collides with his lusts—and the two men's personal and political tauntings threaten to send their country into chaos. When Odili launches a vicious campaign against his former mentor for the same seat in an election, their mutual animosity drives the country to revolution. Published, prophetically, just days before Nigeria's first attempted coup in 1966, A Man of the People is an essential part of Achebe’s body of work.
This collection of short stories includes innovative tales of an aspiring politician, an encounter in the film festival toilets, being stranded in the Fiji airport by George Speight's coup, and a lonely farmer who buys armor on the Internet and jousts in Palmerston North. These stories make an immediate impression with their vigorous, often outrageous humor and with their firm grounding in New Zealand's country towns and suburbs. But their darker subtexts soon become apparent, as does a passionate engagement with social and political issues.
Donald Trump’s election has forced the United States to reckon with not only the political power of the presidency, but also how he and his supporters have used the office to advance their shared vision of America: one that is avowedly nationalist, and unrepentantly rooted in nativism and white supremacy. It might be easy to attribute this dark vision, and the presidency’s immense power to reflect and reinforce it, to the singular character of one particular president—but to do so, this book tells us, would be to ignore the critical role the American public played in making the president “the man of the people” in the nation’s earliest decades. Beginning with the public debate over whether to ratify the Constitution in 1787 and concluding with Andrew Jackson’s own contentious presidency, Nathaniel C. Green traces the origins of our conception of the president as the ultimate American: the exemplar of our collective national values, morals, and “character.” The public divisiveness over the presidency in these earliest years, he contends, forged the office into an incomparable symbol of an emerging American nationalism that cast white Americans as dissenters—lovers of liberty who were willing to mobilize against tyranny in all its forms, from foreign governments to black “enemies” and Indian “savages”—even as it fomented partisan division that belied the promise of unity the presidency symbolized. With testimony from private letters, diaries, newspapers, and bills, Green documents the shaping of the disturbingly nationalistic vision that has given the presidency its symbolic power. This argument is about a different time than our own. And yet it shows how this time, so often revered as a mythic “founding era” from which America has precipitously declined, was in fact the birthplace of the president-centered nationalism that still defines the contours of politics to this day. The lessons of The Man of the People contextualize the political turmoil surrounding the presidency today. Never in modern US history have those lessons been more badly needed.
He is described as a Mau Mau oath-taker, seemingly of two minds ñ both for and against, loyal and disloyal. In A Daunting Journey, Jeremiah Gitau Kiereini, lets us into his life spanning three generations. He reveals insights into the influences and intrigues surrounding the early civil service and the powerful individuals who held Kenya's future in their hands. Kiereini also exposes the dichotomy that irreconcilably split the communities involved in the struggle for independence and the personal contradictions and challenges he encountered as he sought to find pride and loyalty in service to a newly independent Kenya. This is truly a fascinating chronicle that takes us from the humble and difficult years of childhood, through the Mau Mau years, the Kenyatta administration, the Moi regime, and on to the present in the life of Jeremiah Kiereini. Most captivating is the narrative on the infamous 1969 oath-taking commonly referred to as, ëCaai wa Gatunduí and the 1982 coup.
“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.
Thomas Jefferson is one of the most beloved founding fathers of America. His creative genius led to his writing the Declaration of Independence and added to his input on the Constitution. A man of many talents, Thomas Jefferson was known as the "Man of the People." These popular readers include easy-to-read information, fun facts and trivia, humor, activities and a whole lot more. They are great for ages 7-12 (grades 2-6), because although simple, these readers have substance and really engage kids with their stories. They are great for social studies, meeting state and national curriculum standards, individual and group reading programs, centers, library programs, and have many other terrific educational uses. Get the Answer Key for the Quizzes! Click HERE.
One of America's most beloved presidents is the subject of this title, which explores how Teddy Roosevelt grew from a sickly child to a robust leader. Full color.
