Embark on a captivating journey with "Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest." Penned by George Borrow, this novel intertwines the worlds of scholars, Romanies, and the clergy, offering readers a rich tapestry of English life and culture. Set against the backdrop of England, this work is a testament to Borrow's literary prowess and his keen insights into society's diverse facets.
‘Fighting Scholars’ offers the first book-length overview of the ethnographic study of martial arts and combat sports. The book’s main claim is that such activities represent privileged grounds to access different social dimensions, such as emotion, violence, pain, gender, ethnicity and religion. In order to explore these dimensions, the concept of ‘habitus’ is presented prominently as an epistemic remedy for the academic distant gaze of the effaced academic body. The book’s most innovative features are its empirical focus and theoretical orientation. While ethnographic research is a widespread and popular approach within the social sciences, combat sports and martial arts have yet to be sufficiently interrogated from an ethnographic standpoint. The different contributions of this volume are aligned within the same project that began to crystallize in Loïc Wacquant’s ‘Body and Soul’: the construction of a ‘carnal sociology’ that constitutes an exploration of the social world ‘from’ the body.
(Applause Books). SWORD FIGHTING; A MANUAL FOR ACTORS AND DIRECTORS is a comprehensive new work on the art of creating realistic and exciting fight sequences for theatre, film and TV. This book is the product of thirty years research and experimentation into traditional European martial arts by acclaimed fight director John Waller and his associates, and possibly the most wide-ranging and practical book on stage combat ever published.
The book examines, compares, and contrasts the African American and Oromo movements by locating them in the global context, and by showing how life chances changed for the two peoples and their descendants as the modern world system became more complex and developed. Since the same global system that created racialized and exploitative structures in African American and Oromo societies also facilitated the struggles of these two peoples, this book demonstrates the dynamic interplay between social structures and human agencies in the system. African Americans in the United States of America and Oromos in the Ethiopian Empire developed their respective liberation movements in opposition to racial/ethnonational oppression, cultural and colonial domination, exploitation, and underdevelopment. By going beyond its focal point, the book also explores the structural limit of nationalism, and the potential of revolutionary nationalism in promoting a genuine multicultural democracy.
The rule book for the Alliance LARP (Live Action Role-Playing) game, with full color pictures and graphs. Also includes tabletop rules. For more details, visit www.AllianceLARP.com
In "Fighting Injustice", famed trial attorney Michael E. Tigar describes the battles - both inside and outside the courtroom - that have made him one of the world's most courageous defenders of personal freedoms. From his days as a student leader at the University of California at Berkeley in the early 1960s to his representation of Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City federal building bombing conspirator, Tigar has championed personal rights and freedoms and has come to the aid of countless defendants in need of representation, regardless of the unpopularity of the cause.
Native Americans long resisted Western medicine—but had less power to resist the threat posed by Western diseases. And so, as the Office of Indian Affairs reluctantly entered the business of health and medicine, Native peoples reluctantly began to allow Western medicine into their communities. Fighting Invisible Enemies traces this transition among inhabitants of the Mission Indian Agency of Southern California from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. What historian Clifford E. Trafzer describes is not so much a transition from one practice to another as a gradual incorporation of Western medicine into Indian medical practices. Melding indigenous and medical history specific to Southern California, his book combines statistical information and documents from the federal government with the oral narratives of several tribes. Many of these oral histories—detailing traditional beliefs about disease causation, medical practices, and treatment—are unique to this work, the product of the author’s close and trusted relationships with tribal elders. Trafzer examines the years of interaction that transpired before Native people allowed elements of Western medicine and health care into their lives, homes, and communities. Among the factors he cites as impelling the change were settler-borne diseases, the negative effects of federal Indian policies, and the sincere desire of both Indians and agency doctors and nurses to combat the spread of disease. Here we see how, unlike many encounters between Indians and non-Indians in Southern California, this cooperative effort proved positive and constructive, resulting in fewer deaths from infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis. The first study of its kind, Trafzer’s work fills gaps in Native American, medical, and Southern California history. It informs our understanding of the working relationship between indigenous and Western medical traditions and practices as it continues to develop today.
An account of the emergence of creative nonfiction, written by the “godfather” of the genre In the 1970s, Lee Gutkind, a leather-clad hippie motorcyclist and former public relations writer, fought his way into the academy. Then he took on his colleagues. His goal: to make creative nonfiction an accepted academic discipline, one as vital as poetry, drama, and fiction. In this book Gutkind tells the true story of how creative nonfiction became a leading genre for both readers and writers. Creative nonfiction—true stories enriched by relevant ideas, insights, and intimacies—offered liberation to writers, allowing them to push their work in freewheeling directions. The genre also opened doors to outsiders—doctors, lawyers, construction workers—who felt they had stories to tell about their lives and experiences. Gutkind documents the evolution of the genre, discussing the lives and work of such practitioners as Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Rachel Carson, Upton Sinclair, Janet Malcolm, and Vivian Gornick. Gutkind also highlights the ethics of writing creative nonfiction, including how writers handle the distinctions between fact and fiction. Gutkind’s book narrates the story not just of a genre but of the person who brought it to the forefront of the literary and journalistic world.
