Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Description
"A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution-from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality-and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"There's no such thing as rural America. Or, rather, as Steven Conn argues, "rural America" is a phrase that has been made to mean so many things that it doesn't mean anything. In fact, he maintains, rural America--so often characterized as in crisis or in danger of being left behind--has been shaped by the same major forces as the rest of the country since at least the end of the Civil War: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"From a distinctive, inimitable voice, a wickedly funny and fascinating romp through the strange, and often contradictory history of Western parenting"--
Why do we read our kids fairy tales about homicidal stepparents? Exhausted, frazzled, and at sea after the birth of her two children, Traig began to interrogate the traditional parenting advice she'd been conditioned to accept at face value. The result is a deft-- and hilarious-- dissection of the...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis frames climate change and the Anthropocene as the culmination of a history that begins with the discovery of the New World and of the sea route to the Indian Ocean. Ghosh makes the case that the political dynamics of climate change today are rooted in the centuries-old geopolitical order that was constructed by Western colonialism. This argument is set within a broader narrative about human entanglements...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"A magisterial effort packed with insight and written with clarity and enthusiasm. It's also the deal of the year--the equivalent of a year's college course by an engaging, brilliant professor, all for the price of a book."
Who Hasn't Gazed upon the abandoned temples of Angkor Wat or the jungle-choked cities of the Maya and wondered, could the same fate happen to us? In this riveting book, Jared Diamond--whose Guns, Germs, and Steel revolutionized...
Author
Language
English
Description
"With a new introduction by Anthony Arnove, this edition of the classic national bestseller chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools--with its emphasis on great men in high places-- to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"With his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of why civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how some nations successfully recover from crises while adopting selective changes--a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals--ranging...
Publisher
Kanopy Streaming
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
At first glance Brazil appears to be an alluring playground of exciting carnivals, sultry samba, divine football and a vibrantly diverse people. But behind this dazzling facade lies a disturbing story of historys largest-ever slave population. Astonishingly Brazil, a Portuguese colony, received ten-times more African slaves than the numbers transported to North America. This programme looks at those estimated 4 million people with whose blood, sweat...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Today our fatigue feels chronic; our anxieties, amplified. Proliferating technologies command our attention. Many people complain of burnout, and economic instability and the threat of ecological catastrophe fill us with dread. We look to the past, imagining life to have once been simpler and slower, but extreme mental and physical stress is not a modern syndrome. Beginning in classical antiquity, this book demonstrates how exhaustion has always been...
10) The years
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Available in English for the first time, the latest astonishing, bestselling, and award-winning book by Annie Ernaux. The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present -- even projections into the future -- photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect,...
Author
Language
English
Description
Rev. translation of: Civilisation mateÌ#x81;rielle, eÌ#x81;conomie et capitalisme : XVe-XVIIIe sieÌ€cle.Vol. 1: Translation from the French revised by SiaÌ‚n Reynolds; v. 2-3: Translation from the French by SiaÌ‚n Reynolds. Includes bibliographical references and index. v. 1. The structures of everyday life : the limits of the possible -- v. 2. The wheels of commerce -- v. 3. The perspective of the world.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"A major influence on international civil rights, anticolonial, and black consciousness movement, Black Skin, White Masks is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important thinkers on revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in human history."--Jacket.
13) Trans
Publisher
Kanopy Streaming
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Trans is an extraordinary documentary feature film about men and women… and all the variations in between. It is an up-close and very personal journey into the transgender world through the memorable stories and the unusual lives of a remarkable cast of characters. Here we will explore the Transgender Community, perhaps the most misunderstood and mistreated minority in America and around the world. It begins with the story of Lt. Commander Christopher...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Until now the advent of Western romantic love has been seen as a liberation from-or antidote to-ten centuries of misogyny. In this major contribution to gender studies, R. Howard Bloch demonstrates how similar the ubiquitous antifeminism of medieval times and the romantic idealization of woman actually are.
Through analyses of a broad range of patristic and medieval texts, Bloch explores the Christian construction of gender in which the flesh is...
15) Cocaine Nation
Author
Language
English
Description
Cutting through the myths about the white trade, this is the story of cocaine as it's never been told before.
Cocaine is big business and getting bigger. Governments spend millions on a losing war against it, yet it's still the drug of choice in the West.
In Cocaine Nation, Tom Feiling travels the trade routes from Colombia via Miami, Kingston, and Tijuana to London and New York. Cutting through the myths about the white trade, this is the story...
Author
Language
English
Description
This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. "Everything belonging to the Highlands of Scotland has of late become peculiarly interesting. It is not much above half a century since it was otherwise."-Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott placed the Scottish Highlands on the map of popular tourist destinations. This timeworn work-consisting of the 1816 essay "Manners, Customs and History of the Highlanders of Scotland"...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Taking readers on a rollicking ride through history, a master storyteller and reporter, whose legend began in journalism, presents a paradigm-shifting argument that speech, not evolution, is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements"--NoveList.
"Before Tom Wolfe was a bestselling novelist, he was a groundbreaking journalist. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of his own most important...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
AMIDST THE WRECKAGE OF FINANCIAL RUIN, PEOPLE ARE LEFT PUZZLING ABOUT HOW IT HAPPENED. WHERE DID ALL THE PROBLEMS BEGIN? For the answer, Jack Cashill, a journalist as shrewd as he is seasoned, looks past the headlines and deep into pages of history and comes back with the goods. From Plato to payday loans, from Aristotle to AIG, from Shakespeare to the Salomon Brothers, from the Medici to Bernie Madoff-in Popes and Bankers Jack Cashill unfurls a fascinating...
Didn't find it?
Didn't find it in the Minuteman Library Network? Request it from other Massachusetts library systems.
Can't find what you are looking for? Recommend it to your local library as a future purchase. Suggest a Purchase