Monday, March 29, 2010

Mugabe

Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe's Future
by Martin Meredith

Robert Mugabe came to power in Zimbabwe in 1980 after a long civil war in Rhodesia. The white minority government had become an international outcast in refusing to give in to the inevitability of black majority rule. Finally the defiant white prime minister Ian Smith was forced to step down and Mugabe was elected president. Initially he promised reconciliation between white and blacks, encouraged Zimbabwe's economic and social development, and was admired throughout the world as one of the leaders of the emerging nations and as a model for a transition from colonial leadership. But as Martin Meredith shows in this history of Mugabe's rule, Mugabe from the beginning was sacrificing his purported ideals--and Zimbabwe's potential--to the goal of extending and cementing his autocratic leadership. Over time, Mugabe has become ever more dictatorial, and seemingly less and less interested in the welfare of his people, treating Zimbabwe's wealth and resources as spoils of war for his inner circle. In recent years he has unleashed a reign of terror and corruption in his country. Like the Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Zimbabwe has been on a steady slide to disaster. Now for the first time the whole story is told in detail by an expert. It is a riveting and tragic political story, a morality tale, and an essential text for understanding today's Africa.







Thursday, March 25, 2010

Italians Then, Mexicans Now

Italians Then, Mexicans Now: Immigrant Origins and Second-Generation Progress, 1890 To 2000
by Joel Perlmann

Joel Perlmann offers a sustained comparison of immigrant and second-generation wellbeing over the past hundred years. Using the latest immigration data from the census and other recent studies - as well as a century of census data - Perlmann paints a more optimistic picture of immigrant prospects than is envisioned by many other scholars of immigration.

Rich with historical data, Italians Then, Mexicans Now persuasively argues that today's Mexican immigrants are making slow but steady socioeconomic progress and may one day reach parity with earlier immigrant groups who moved up into the heart of American middle-class society.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Marketing

Marketing
by Charles Lamb, Joseph Hair, and Carl McDaniel

Every day through billboards, television commercials, and even in the cereal aisle at the grocery story we are exposed to the 4 Ps of marketing. Understanding Product, Place, Promotion, and Price not only helps students become better marketing professionals, it helps them become better consumers. With coverage of current marketing practices and exciting pedagogical features the Lamb/Hair/McDaniel family of texts gives students the foundation they need to recognize how and where marketing concepts are being used.

Monday, March 22, 2010

The Code of the Samurai

The Code of the Samurai
by Thomas Cleary (Translator), Yuzan Daidoji, Thomas F. Cleary, Oscar Ratti, Taira Shigesuke

The Code of the Samurai is a four-hundred-year-old explication of the rules and expectations embodied in Bushido, the Japanese way of the warrior. Bushido has played a major role in shaping the behavior of modern Japanese government, corporations, society, and individuals, as well as in shaping the modern martial arts within Japan and internationally. The Japanese original of this book has been one of the primary sources on the tenets of Bushido, a way of thought that remains fascinating to modern world, East and West.

The House on Mango Street

The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros

Here is Sandra Cisnero's greatly admired and best-selling novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children and their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics even as it depicts a new American landscape. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong - not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.


Sunday, March 21, 2010

Makers and Takers

Makers and Takers: How Wealth and Progress Are Made and How They Are Taken Away or Prevented
by Edmund Contoski

"Makers and Takers" shows how the free market works -- and why government intervention doesn't. It examines various forms of economic intervention (taxation, regulation, monetary policy) and their effects on consumer products and services, the health and lives of Americans, and the nation's economic well-being. The book also explores a broad range of environmental issues. Scientific subjects such as pollution, acid rain and global warming are explained in clear, nontechnical language -- and some surprising facts here discredit current government policies.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Chicano!

Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement
by F. Arturo Rosales

Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement designates four major episodes of the Mexican civil rights struggle in the United States. Chapter One features efforts of the "lost-land" generation (southwest Mexican natives) to stem property losses, maintain their culture and assert civil rights given them by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the US takeover of the Southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. The second portion, Chapters Two to Five, views immigrant attempts in the early part of this century to protect themselves from a hostile American public. In the effort to safeguard their civil rights, an elaborate Mexico Lindo (Pretty Mexico) nationalism emerged that immigrants used to rally around issues of repression. Chapters Six and Seven look at the optimistic Mexican American generation made up primarily of children of immigrants who did not have ties to Mexico. Not only did this generation demand the civil rights to which they were entitled, but they also strove to acculturate to Anglo American culture without turning their backs on their Mexican heritage. In addition, Mexican Americans in this era made the greatest attempts to empower themselves as workers. The final and most lengthy section of the book traces the evolution of the Chicano Movement and assesses its legacy. It takes the reader through the most turbulent days of civil unrest and grass-roots organizing in Mexican American history.

The Libertarian Reader

The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tse to Milton Friedman
edited by David Boaz

The first collection of seminal writings on a movement that is rapidly changing the face of American politics, The Libertarian Reader links some of the most fertile minds of our time to a centuries-old commitment to freedom, self-determination, and opposition to intrusive government. A movement that today counts among its supporters Steve Forbes, Nat Hentoff, and P.J. O'Rourke, libertarianism joins a continuous thread of political reason running throughout history.

Writing in 1995 about the large numbers of Americans who say they'd welcome a third party, David Broder of The Washington Post commented, "The distinguishing characteristic of these potential independent voters—aside from their disillusionment with Washington politicians of both parties—is their libertarian streak. They are skeptical of the Democrats because they identify them with big government. They are wary of the Republicans because of the growing influence within the GOP of the religious right."

In The Libertarian Reader, David Boaz has gathered the writers and works that represent the building blocks of libertarianism. These individuals have spoken out for the basic freedoms that have made possible the flowering of spiritual, moral, and economic life. For all independent thinkers, this unique sourcebook will stand as a classic reference for years to come, and a reminder that libertarianism is one of our oldest and most venerable American traditions.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Economics

Economics: A Contemporary Introduction
by William A. McEachern

This very successful textbook is distinguished by a superior writing style that draws upon common student experiences to introduce economic concepts, making economic theory more accessible and interesting. "Case Studies" and numerous examples take advantage of students' intuitive knowledge of economics, building upon real-life situations. A streamlined design places pedagogy and illustrations directly within the flow of the text, making them less distracting and more useful for students.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 2

The Civil War: A Narrative, Fredericksburg to Meridian
by Shelby Foote

"Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be better." —Atlantic

"Though the events of this middle year of the Civil War have been recounted hundreds of times, they have rarely been re-created with such vigor and such picturesque detail." —The New York Times Book Review

"The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequaled." —Walter Mills