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    Sunday, September 11, 2016

    The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe



    Violent crime has been rising sharply in many American cities after two decades of decline. Homicides jumped nearly 17 percent in 2015 in the largest 50 cities, the biggest one-year increase since 1993. The reason is what Heather Mac Donald first identified nationally as the “Ferguson effect”: Since the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, officers have been backing off of proactive policing, and criminals are becoming emboldened.

    This book expands on Mac Donald’s groundbreaking and controversial reporting on the Ferguson effect and the criminal-justice system. It deconstructs the central narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement: that racist cops are the greatest threat to young black males. On the contrary, it is criminals and gangbangers who are responsible for the high black homicide death rate.

    The War on Cops exposes the truth about officer use of force and explodes the conceit of “mass incarceration.” A rigorous analysis of data shows that crime, not race, drives police actions and prison rates. The growth of proactive policing in the 1990s, along with lengthened sentences for violent crime, saved thousands of minority lives. In fact, Mac Donald argues, no government agency is more dedicated to the proposition that “black lives matter” than today’s data-driven, accountable police department.

    Mac Donald gives voice to the many residents of high-crime neighborhoods who want proactive policing. She warns that race-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. This book is a call for a more honest and informed debate about policing, crime, and race.



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    Freedom Is Power: Liberty through Political Representation (Contemporary Political Theory)



    Using the history of political thought and real world political contexts, including South Africa and the recent global financial crisis, this book argues that power is integral to freedom. It demonstrates how freedom depends upon power and contends that liberty for all citizens is best maintained if conceived as power through political representation. Against those who depoliticize freedom through a romantic conception of 'the people' and faith in supposedly independent judicial and political institutions, Lawrence Hamilton argues that real modern freedom can only be achieved through representative and participative mechanisms that limit domination and empower classes and groups who become disempowered in the conflicts that inevitably pervade politics. This is a sophisticated contribution to a contemporary political theory that will be of interest to scholars and students of history, politics, philosophy, economics, sociology, development studies and Southern African studies.



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    Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa (Routledge Religion Companions)



    The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa offers a multi-disciplinary analysis of the Christian tradition across the African continent and throughout a long historical span. The volume offers historical and thematic essays tracing the introduction of Christianity in Africa, as well as its growth, developments, and effects, including the lived experience of African Christians. Individual chapters address the themes of Christianity and gender, the development of African-initiated churches, the growth of Pentecostalism, and the influence of Christianity on issues of sexuality, music, and public health. This comprehensive volume will serve as a valuable overview and reference work for students and researchers worldwide.



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    Friday, August 26, 2016

    Will Smith: A Biography of a Rapper Turned Movie Star (African-American Icons)



    From silly kid to Grammy-winning rapper, Will Smith has taken the fast track to superstardom. His popular rap music opened doors for Smith, who became a TV star on THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR. After years of balancing rap and television, Smith emerged as a serious actor in SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION and as a profitable, crowd drawing star in BAD BOYS. Readers get a rare peek behind the scenes of stardom at this tremendously popular actor, rapper and family man.



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    We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program (2015 Edition)



    The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized the space program as an agent for social change, using federal equal employment opportunity laws to open workplaces at NASA and NASA contractors to African Americans while creating thousands of research and technology jobs in the Deep South to ameliorate poverty. We Could Not Fail tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of how shooting for the stars helped to overcome segregation on earth.

    Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. They recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers to move, in some cases literally, from the cotton fields to the launching pad. The authors vividly describe what it was like to be the sole African American in a NASA workgroup and how these brave and determined men also helped to transform Southern society by integrating colleges, patenting new inventions, holding elective office, and reviving and governing defunct towns. Adding new names to the roster of civil rights heroes and a new chapter to the story of space exploration, We Could Not Fail demonstrates how African Americans broke the color barrier by competing successfully at the highest level of American intellectual and technological achievement.



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    Wednesday, July 13, 2016

    Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction, 1st Edition



    The ancient Egyptians are an enduring source of fascination--mummies and pyramids, curses and rituals have captured our imaginations for generations. We all have a mental picture of ancient Egypt, but is it the right one? How much do we really know about this once great civilization?

    In this absorbing introduction, Ian Shaw, one of the foremost authorities on Ancient Egypt, describes how our current ideas about Egypt are based not only on the thrilling discoveries made by early Egyptologists but also on fascinating new kinds of evidence produced by modern scientific and linguistic analyses. He also explores the changing influences on our responses to these finds, by examining the impact of Egyptology on various aspects of popular culture such as literature, cinema, opera, and contemporary art. He considers all aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, from tombs and mummies to the discovery of artifacts and the decipherment of hieroglyphs, and from despotic pharaohs to animal-headed gods. From the general reader interested in Ancient Egypt to students and teachers of ancient history and archaeology, to museum-goers, this Very Short Introduction will not disappoint.




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    Friday, June 24, 2016

    Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales: Africa Edition



    Old tales of magic and woe from all across Africa retold as a beautiful anthology of comics. Discover the stories of The Pretty Stranger Who Killed the King, Chief Five Heads, The Disobedient Daughter Who Married a Skull, and much more.

    Join a wide array of indie cartoonists such as Faith Erin Hicks (The Nameless City), Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), Jarret Williams (Super Pro KO), Nina Matsumoto (The Simpsons), Sloane Leong (Clutch and the Softest Shadow), Kel McDonald (Misfits of Avalon), and Kate Ashwin (Widdershins) as they share with you fairytales and folktales from Africa.



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    The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness



    Afrocentrism. Eurocentrism. Caribbean Studies. British Studies. To the forces of cultural nationalism hunkered down in their camps, this bold hook sounds a liberating call. There is,Paul Gilroy tells us, a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but all of these at once, a black Atlantic culture whose themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until now, unremarked. Challenging the practices and assumptions of cultural studies, The Black Atlantic also complicates and enriches our understanding of modernism.

    Debates about postmodernism have cast an unfashionable pall over questions of historical periodization. Gilroy bucks this trend by arguing that the development of black culture in the Americas arid Europe is a historical experience which can be called modern for a number of clear and specific reasons. For Hegel, the dialectic of master and slave was integral to modernity, and Gilroy considers the implications of this idea for a transatlantic culture. In search of a poetics reflecting the politics and history of this culture, he takes us on a transatlantic tour of the music that, for centuries, has transmitted racial messages and feeling around the world, from the Jubilee Singers in the nineteenth century to Jimi Hendrix to rap. He also explores this internationalism as it is manifested in black writing from the "double consciousness" of W. E. B. Du Bois to the "double vision" of Richard Wright to the compelling voice of Toni Morrison.

    In a final tour de force, Gilroy exposes the shared contours of black and Jewish concepts of diaspora in order both to establish a theoretical basis for healing rifts between blacks and Jews in contemporary culture and to further define the central theme of his book: that blacks have shaped a nationalism, if not a nation, within the shared culture of the black Atlantic.



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    Thursday, June 16, 2016

    Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition



    In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of black people and black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of blacks on western continents, Robinson argues, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.

    To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright.



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    The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt



    The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt uniquely covers 700,000 years of ancient Egypt, from c. 700,000 BC to AD 311. Following the story from the Egyptians' prehistoric origins to their conquest by the Persians, Greeks, and Romans, this book resurrects a fascinating society replete with remarkable historical information. It investigates such subjects as the changing nature of life and death in the Nile valley to some of the earliest masterpieces of art, architecture, and literature in the ancient world. The authors--an international team of experts working at the cutting edge of their particular fields--outline the principal sequence of political events, including detailed examinations of the three so-called 'intermediate periods' which were previously regarded as 'dark ages' and are only now beginning to be better understood. They also examine cultural and social patterns, including stylistic developments in art and literature. Addressing the issues surrounding this distinctive culture, vividly relating the rise and fall of ruling dynasties, exploring colorful personalities, and uncovering surprising facts, The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt is certain to enrich our understanding of this endlessly intriguing civilization.

    "Brimming with...intriguing facts...also provides a first-rate overview of le progrès Egyptien--from the period when Homo erectus first stalked the land right up to Octavian's triumphant entry into Egypt in 30 BC."--The Times (London) (on the previous edition)



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    The Black Jacobins - Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution



    A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World.

    This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.



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    Monday, June 6, 2016

    African Mythology: A to Z (2nd Edition)



    Humans use mythology and ritual to establish a sense of community, identity, and an understanding of their place in the universe. These tools maintain the traditions of a culture and reflect what is most important in people’s lives. We read myths not only to learn about the culture in which the myth originated but to discover what was in the hearts and minds of the mythmakers. This book explores the surviving mythological traditions of Africa outside Egypt, from the earliest known myths to the most recent. The myths of African peoples give us a glimpse into their ways of life and worldviews. Because of the vast numbers of traditions and almost limitless numbers of tales, it is impossible to represent them all in a book of this size. We have attempted to include a sampling of myths that are representative of particular cultures and that come from as wide a variety of cultures as possible.



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    African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice



    As African societies come to live more and more in cities, they do so in ways that challenge prevailing theories and models of urban development in geography, sociology, anthropology, and planning. In this groundbreaking book, Myers uses African urban concepts and experiences to speak back to theoretical and practical concerns. It argues for a re-visioning - a seeing again, and a revising - of how cities in Africa are discussed and written about in both urban studies and African studies.

    Cities in Africa are still either ignored - banished to a different, other, lesser category of not-quite cities - or held up as examples of all that can go wrong with urbanism in much of the mainstream and even critical urban literature. Myers instead encourages African studies and urban studies scholars across the world to engage with the vibrancy and complexity of African cities with fresh eyes. Touching on a diverse range of cities across Africa - from Zanzibar to Nairobi, Cape Town to Mogadishu, Kinshasa to Dakar - the book uses the author's own research and a close reading of works by other scholars, writers, and artists to help illuminate what is happening in and across the region's cities.



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    Monday, May 23, 2016

    The American Prejudice Against Color



    In 1853, William G. Allen, the "Coloured Professor" of Classics at New York Central College, became engaged to Mary King, a student at the coeducational, racially integrated school and daughter of a local white abolitionist minister. Rumors of their betrothal incited a mob of several hundred men armed with "tar, feathers, poles, and an empty barrel spiked with shingle nails." Allen and King narrowly escaped with their lives, married in New York City, and then fled as fugitives to England and Ireland. Their love story and brave resistance were recorded in engrossing detail by Allen in two pamphlets-The American Prejudice Against Color: An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily the Nation Got into An Uproar (1853) and A Short Personal Narrative (1860). Reproduced here in their entirety, Allen's forthright, eloquent, and ironic accounts, which include excerpts from abolitionist and anti-abolitionist newspaper reports about the incident, drew renewed threats against the exiled pair as well as support from the couple's circle of anti-slavery friends and allies, a diverse group including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Beriah Green, Gerrit Smith, Reverend Samuel J. May, and George Thompson. The experiences related by Allen vividly illustrate the rampant fears of "amalgamation" that sparked violent protests in antebellum America. He also reveals white abolitionists' contradictions regarding mixed-race relationships. Also contained in this volume is Louisa May Alcott's M.L., a fictional tale of interracial love based on her familiarity with the Allen-King episode through her abolitionist uncle, the Reverend Samuel J. May. Alcott's story was refused by The Atlantic magazine because, she said, it "might offend the dear South." An insightful introduction by editor Sarah Elbert places the writings within a historical and cultural context. She details William G. Allen's notable career as a graduate of the Oneida Institute and as an active abolitionist in the network reaching from New York's North Star Country through Boston, Canada, England, and Ireland. In exile, William and Mary King Allen, important members of the trans-Atlantic movement, continued their struggle for "free association" and supported their family by teaching poor children in London.



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    Religion and AIDS in Africa



    The African AIDS epidemic has sparked fierce debate over the role of religion. Some scholars and activists argue that religion is contributing to the spread of HIV and to the stigmatization of people living with AIDS. Others claim that religion reduces the spread of HIV and promotes care and support for the sick and their survivors.

    Religion and AIDS in Africa offer the first comprehensive empirical account of the impact of religion on the AIDS epidemic. Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb draw upon extensive fieldwork in Malawi, including hundreds of interviews with religious leaders and lay people, and survey data from more than 30 other sub-Saharan African countries. Their research confirms the importance of religious narratives and institutions in everything related to AIDS in Africa. Among other key findings, Trinitapoli and Weinreb show that a combination of religious and biomedical approaches to prevention reduces risk most effectively; that a significant minority of religious leaders encourage condom use; that Christian congregations, in particular, play a crucial role in easing suffering among the sick and their dependents; and that religious spaces, in general, are vital for disseminating information and developing new strategies for HIV prevention and AIDS mitigation.

    For anyone wishing to move beyond the rhetoric and ideology that plague debates about one of the most challenging crises of our time, Religion and AIDS in Africa is the authoritative account. It will change the way readers think about religious life and about AIDS in the region.



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    Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist



    This cultural history of nineteenth-century narratives of slave and free women traces the ways in which these writings began to resist dominant literary conventions and to offer the first alternative versions of black womanhood. Covering the period between the 1850s and the turn of the century, it depicts an era of intense cultural and political activity when Afro-American women first began to emerge as novelists. Why black women wrote novels, and what they thought novels could do, are among the questions discussed. Students of American literature and of black history; women's studies.



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    Friday, May 20, 2016

    Middle Kingdom Art In Ancient Egypt, 2300-1590 B.C



    A companion volume to the author's: Old Kingdom art 3188 to 2294 B.C., and New Kingdom art 1500 to 1315 B.C.



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    Sunday, May 1, 2016

    Medieval Africa 1250-1800



    This radically revised and updated companion volume to the authors' well-known Africa since 1800 (now in its fourth edition) takes African history from about 1250 AD, when African societies were expanding their political and economic scope, and when Islamic influences were already reaching across the Sahara and down the Indian Ocean coastline. It continues through the period of early European contact from the fifteenth century onward, with much emphasis on expanding Atlantic trade.



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    Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos



    This exhibition catalog is a striking reflect off the arts originating from the Igbo people in Nigeria. The Igbo produce a wide variety of art including traditional figures, masks, artifacts, and textiles, plus works in metals such as bronze. Artworks from the Igbo have been found from as early as 9th century with the bronze artifacts found at Igbo Ukwu. This catalog is exquisitely illustrated throughout with 338 color and b/w photographic reproductions.



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    History of The Negro Race In America 1619 To 1800



    George Washington Williams was an American Civil War veteran, minister, politician, lawyer, journalist, and groundbreaking historian of African-American history. Shortly before his death he traveled to King Leopold II's Congo Free State. Shortly before his death he traveled to King Leopold II's Congo Free State. Shocked by what he saw, he wrote an open letter to Leopold about the suffering of the region's inhabitants at the hands of Leopold's agents, which spurred the first public outcry against the regime running the Congo under which millions lost their lives.



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    History of Ancient Egypt



    George Rawlinson (1812-1902) was a prolific author about classical history, and History of Ancient Egypt is one of Rawlinson’s most famous works. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture, and construction, created some of the world’s first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world. With world-famous leaders like King Tut and Cleopatra, it’s no wonder that today’s world has so many Egyptologists.
    What makes the accomplishments of the Ancient Egyptians all the more remarkable is that Egypt was historically a place of great political turbulence. Its position made it both valuable and vulnerable to tribes across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and Ancient Egypt had no shortage of its own internecine warfare. Its most famous conquerors would come from Europe, with Alexander the Great laying the groundwork for the Hellenic Ptolemy line and the Romans extinguishing that line after defeating Cleopatra and driving her to suicide.



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    Evil In Africa: Encounters With The Everyday



    William C. Olsen, Walter E. A. van Beek, and the contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as the malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity.



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    Tuesday, April 12, 2016

    Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office



    "I'm not a businessman-I'm a business, man."
    --Jay-Z

    Some people think Jay-Z is just another rapper. Others see him as just another celebrity/mega-star. The reality is, no matter what you think Jay-Z is, he first and foremost a business. And as much as Martha Stewart or Oprah, he has turned himself into a lifestyle.

    You can wake up to the local radio station playing Jay-Z's latest hit, spritz yourself with his 9IX cologne, slip on a pair of his Rocawear jeans, lace up your Reebok S. Carter sneakers, catch a Nets basketball game in the afternoon, and grab dinner at The Spotted Pig before heading to an evening performance of the Jay-Z-backed Broadway musical Fela! and a nightcap at his 40/40 Club. He'll profit at every turn of your day.

    But despite Jay-Z's success, there are still many Americans whose impressions of him are foggy, outdated, or downright incorrect. Surprisingly to many, he honed his business philosophy not at a fancy B school, but on the streets of Brooklyn, New York and beyond as a drug dealer in the 1980s.

    Empire State of Mind tells the story behind Jay-Z's rise to the top as told by the people who lived it with him- from classmates at Brooklyn's George Westinghouse High School; to the childhood friend who got him into the drug trade; to the DJ who convinced him to stop dealing and focus on music. This book explains just how Jay-Z propelled himself from the bleak streets of Brooklyn to the heights of the business world.

    Zack O'Malley Greenburg draws on his one-on-one interviews with hip-hop luminaries such as DJ Clark Kent, Questlove of The Roots, Damon Dash, Fred "Fab 5 Freddy" Brathwaite, MC Serch; NBA stars Jamal Crawford and Sebastian Telfair; and recording industry executives including Craig Kallman, CEO of Atlantic Records.
    He also includes new information on Jay-Z's various business dealings, such as:

    *The feature movie about Jay-Z and his first basketball team that was filmed by Fab 5 Freddy in 2003 but never released.
    *The Jay-Z branded Jeep that was scrapped just before going into production.
    *The real story behind his association with Armand de Brignac champagne.
    *The financial ramifications of his marriage to Beyonce.

    Jay-Z's tale is compelling not just because of his celebrity, but because it embodies the rags-to-riches American dream and is a model for any entrepreneur looking to build a commercial empire.



    THIS COPY ISN'T THE BEST FORMATED SO IT CAN BE UNCOMFORTABLE TO READ. UNTIL WE FIND ANOTHER COPY, YOU CAN TRY TO READ THIS ONE.

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    Black in Blue: African-American Police Officers and Racism, 1st Edition



    From New York to Los Angeles, police departments across the country are consistently accused of racism. Although historically white police precincts have been slowly integrating over the past few decades, African-American officers still encounter racism on the job. Bolton and Feagin have interviewed fifty veteran African-American police officers to provide real-life and vivid examples of the difficulties and discrimination these officers face every day inside and outside the police station from barriers in hiring and getting promoted to lack of trust from citizens and members of the black community.



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    Friday, April 8, 2016

    Egypt's Making: The Origins of Ancient Egypt 5000-2000 BC 2nd Edition



    Already a classic and widely used text, this second edition has been wholly revised and updated in the light of the many discoveries made since its first publication. Michael Rice's bold and original work evokes the fascination and wonder of the most ancient period of Egypt's history.

    Covering a huge range of topics, including formative influences in the political and social organization and art of Egypt, the origins of kingship, the age of pyramids, the nature of Egypt's contact with the lands around the Arabian Gulf, and the earliest identifiable developments of the historic Egyptian personality.

    Egypt's Making is a scholarly yet readable and imaginative approach to this compelling ancient civilization.



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    Brief Courtroom Techniques For The Non-Lawyer



    This book is a compilation of several brief courtroom strategies. Most of them are regarding traffic violations. Some of them are very similar however, they were gathered together from several different sources. Should you find yourself in court, you might find them useful. Also included is a brief section on what you might say should you be stopped by a public servant(s) (cop) while walking down the street, riding in the car, etc. 31 pages of Highly useful information. This Book is a MUST HAVE!!



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    Africana Womanism - Reclaiming Ourselves



    AFRICANA WOMANISM: RECLAIMING OURSELVES poses new challenges for the feminist movement. In fact, in the words of Delores P. Aldridge, it is "unquestionably a pioneering effort whose time has come. It provides an exciting & fresh approach to understanding the tensions existing among the mainstream feminist, the Black feminist, the African feminist & the Africana womanist." Hudson-Weems examines the perceptions women in the African diaspora have of their historical & contemporary roles. It is within this comparative framework that the work advances the state of knowledge on the lives of women in color. Since the initial appeal of feminism was & continues to be largely for educated, middle-class white women & not black working class women, the onus of responsibility for the destiny of the Africana woman rests on her. The growing need to be self-named & self-defined, the desire for reclamation of her historical past, the search for a stronger sense of belongingness & the greater call for cultural rootedness provide the rationale & justify the urgency for a new direction. AFRICANA WOMANISM is timely, theoretically fitting & intrinsically advantageous to the Africana woman. In the triple marginality of black women, race rises above class & gender. Distributors: Baker & Taylor; Midwest Library Service.



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    Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt



    Presents proof that an advanced black African civilization inhabited the Sahara long before Pharaonic Egypt

    • Reveals black Africa to be at the genesis of ancient civilization and the human story

    • Examines extensive studies into the lost civilization of the “Star People” by renowned anthropologists, archaeologists, genetic scientists, and cultural historians as well as the authors’ archaeoastronomy and hieroglyphics research

    • Deciphers the history behind the mysterious Nabta Playa ceremonial area and its stone calendar circle and megaliths

    Relegated to the realm of archaeological heresy, despite a wealth of hard scientific evidence, the theory that an advanced civilization of black Africans settled in the Sahara long before Pharaonic Egypt existed has been dismissed and even condemned by conventional Egyptologists, archaeologists, and the Egyptian government. Uncovering compelling new evidence, Egyptologist Robert Bauval, and astrophysicist Thomas Brophy present the anthropological, climatological, archaeological, geological, and genetic research supporting this hugely debated theory of the black African origin of Egyptian civilization.

    Building upon extensive studies from the past four decades and their own archaeoastronomical and hieroglyphic research, the authors show how the early black culture known as the Cattle People not only domesticated cattle but also had a sophisticated grasp of astronomy; created plentiful rock art at Gilf Kebir and Gebel Uwainat; had trade routes to the Mediterranean coast, central Africa, and the Sinai; held spiritual and occult ceremonies; and constructed a stone calendar circle and megaliths at the ceremonial site of Nabta Playa reminiscent of Stonehenge, yet much older. Revealing these “Star People” as the true founders of ancient Egyptian civilization, this book completely rewrites the history of world civilization, placing black Africa back in its rightful place at the center of mankind’s origins.



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    Sunday, April 3, 2016

    Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism



    Black & Blue is the first systematic description of how American doctors think about racial differences and how this kind of thinking affects the treatment of their black patients. The standard studies of medical racism examine past medical abuses of black people and do not address the racially motivated thinking and behaviors of physicians practicing medicine today.

    Black & Blue penetrates the physician’s private sphere where racial fantasies and misinformation distort diagnoses and treatments. Doctors have always absorbed the racial stereotypes and folkloric beliefs about racial differences that permeate the general population. Within the world of medicine, this racial folklore has infiltrated all of the medical sub-disciplines, from cardiology to gynecology to psychiatry. Doctors have thus imposed white or black racial identities upon every organ system of the human body, along with racial interpretations of black children, the black elderly, the black athlete, black musicality, black pain thresholds, and other aspects of black minds and bodies. The American medical establishment does not readily absorb either historical or current information about medical racism. For this reason, racial enlightenment will not reach medical schools until the current race-aversive curricula include new historical and sociological perspectives.



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    An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt - 2nd Edition



    This student-friendly introduction to the archaeology of ancient Egypt guides readers from the Paleolithic to the Greco-Roman periods and has now been updated to include recent discoveries and new illustrations. Superbly illustrated with photographs, maps, and site plans, with additional illustrations in this new edition - Organized into 11 chapters, covering: the history of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology; prehistoric and pharaonic chronology and the ancient Egyptian language; geography, resources, and environment; and seven chapters organized chronologically and devoted to specific archaeological sites and evidence - Includes sections on salient topics such as the constructing the Great Pyramid at Giza and the process of mummification.



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    An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt - 1st Edition



    An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt is a comprehensive overview of Egyptian archaeology skillfully organized to guide the reader from Egypt's prehistoric past through the Pharaonic dynasties and the Greco-Roman Period. * Provides an unprecedented introduction to the archaeology of ancient Egypt and its culture, monuments, and civilization * Beautifully illustrated with over 120 color and black and white illustrations, including artifacts, maps, and site and building plans * Includes special sections on such topics of perennial interest as building the pyramids at Giza, mummification, and deciphering hieroglyphs * Organized into 11 chapters, covering: the history of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology; prehistoric and pharaonic chronology and the ancient Egyptian language; geography, resources, and environment; and seven chapters organized chronologically and devoted to specific archaeological sites and evidence * Includes discussion of new excavations in Egypt, connecting recent work with the results of projects spanning the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.



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    Alexandria and Alexandrianism



    One of the great seats of learning and repositories of knowledge in the ancient world, Alexandria, and the great school of thought to which it gave its name, made a vital contribution to the development of intellectual and cultural heritage in the Occidental world. This book brings together twenty papers delivered at a symposium held at the J. Paul Getty Museum on the subject of Alexandria and Alexandrianism. Subjects range from “The Library of Alexandria and Ancient Egyptian Learning” and “Alexander’s Alexandria” to “Alexandria and the Origins of Baroque Architecture.”

    With nearly two hundred illustrations, this handsome volume presents some of the world’s leading scholars on the continuing influence and fascination of this great city. The distinguished contributors include Peter Green, R. R. R. Smith, and the late Bernard Bothmer.



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    Friday, April 1, 2016

    Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism



    Pharaoh Akhenaten, who reigned for seventeen years in the fourteenth-century B.C.E, is one of the most intriguing rulers of ancient Egypt. His odd appearance and his preoccupation with worshiping the sun disc Aten have stimulated academic discussion and controversy for more than a century. Despite the numerous books and articles about this enigmatic figure, many questions about Akhenaten and the Atenism religion remain unanswered. In Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism, James K. Hoffmeier argues that Akhenaten was not, as is often said, a radical advocating a new religion, but rather a primitivist: that is, one who reaches back to a golden age and emulates it. Akhenaten's inspiration was the Old Kingdom (2650-2400 B.C.E.) when the sun-god Re/Atum ruled as the unrivaled head of the Egyptian pantheon. Hoffmeier finds that Akhenaten was a genuine convert to the worship of Aten, the sole creator God, based on the Pharoahs own testimony of a theophany, a divine encounter that launched his monotheistic religious odyssey. The book also explores the Atenist religions possible relationship to Israels religion, offering a close comparison of the hymn to the Aten to Psalm 104, which has been identified by scholars as influenced by the Egyptian hymn. Through a careful reading of key texts, artworks, and archaeological studies, Hoffmeier provides compelling new insights into a religion that predated Moses and Hebrew monotheism, the impact of Atenism on Egyptian religion and politics, and the aftermath of Akhenaten's reign.



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    Akhenaten: The Heretic King



    Here is a striking portrait of Akhenaten, the monotheistic worshiper of the sun and best-known Egyptian king next to Tutankhamen. Various writers have depicted this strange ruler of the fourteenth century B.C. as a disguised woman or a eunuch, a mentor of Moses, or a forerunner of Christ. Drawing on a vast amount of new evidence from his own excavations, the Director of the Akhenaten Temple Project describes the kingly heretic against the background of imperial Egypt. Donald Redford's work, available for the first time in paperback, shows Akhenaten to be even more fascinating in this context than in earlier, less realistic interpretations.



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    African Origins of The Major World Religions



    Reclaiming Afrikan religious precedence / Amon Saba Saakana --
    Moses : African influence on Judaism / Yosef Ben-Jochannan --
    The Kamitic genesis of Christianity / Charles S. Finch --
    The spirits that rule the world : African religions & Judaism / Modupe Oduyoye --
    The origin of the Trinity in art & religion : Ethiopian roots in the Egypto-Greek & Hebrew / Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin --
    From Buddha to Buddhism : the life and legacy of India's black sage / Wayne B. Chandler.



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    African Indigenous Religions and Disease Causation: From Spiritual Beings to Living Humans




    This comparative and historical study focuses on religious aspects of disease etiologies among five, systematically selected, African peoples: the San, Maasai, Sukuma, Kongo, and Yoruba. Unlike the homogenizing tendencies of many earlier comparative works by scholars of religion, this book highlights the differences between the plurality within the religions and cultures of the selected peoples, as well as processes of change. The work covers a period of about 100 years, from the late 19th to the late 20th century, and much of the material used comes from European mission archives. To different degrees among the peoples studied, there has been a gradual shift from an emphasis on spiritual beings such as God and ancestors to living humans like 'witches' as agents of disease. In a theoretically elective analysis, possible reasons for this shift are discussed.



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    Thursday, February 11, 2016

    Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Space, Transforming Culture



    A sweeping, multidisciplinary study that analyzes and identifies some of the main lineaments of the Central African cultural legacy in the Caribbean. This long-awaited study is based on more than three decades of research and analysis. Scholars will be fascinated with the transatlantic comparative data. The author identifies Central African cultural forms in those areas settled in Africa by the Koongo, Mbundu, and Ovimbunde. (The modern-day locations of these three ethnic groups are present-day Congo, Zaire and Angola.) The book illuminates Caribbean thought and practice by comparison with Central African worldview and custom. The work is based on extensive primary and secondary sources, oral interviews, letters and diaries, folktales, proverbs and songs. In its multidisciplinary approach and depth, it highlights the debate concerning the origin and transformation of cultural forms in the Caribbean against a larger background of African culture, economy, colonialism, slavery, emancipation and independence. With its Central African focus, the book is a pioneering perspective on Caribbean cultural forms. A noted linguist, the author uses her knowledge of the most functional languages of the region, Spanish, English and French, to access creole languages, which gives the study a truly pan-Caribbean breadth. The book appeals to all interested in African diaspora studies, African and Caribbean history, linguistics and cultural anthropology. Central Africa in the Caribbean includes numerous maps, illustrations, and musical scores.



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    Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes



    Super Black places the appearance of black superheroes alongside broad and sweeping cultural trends in American politics and pop culture, which reveals how black superheroes are not disposable pop products, but rather a fascinating racial phenomenon through which futuristic expressions and fantastic visions of black racial identity and symbolic political meaning are presented. Adilifu Nama sees the value—and finds new avenues for exploring racial identity—in black superheroes who are often dismissed as sidekicks, imitators of established white heroes, or are accused of having no role outside of blaxploitation film contexts.

    Nama examines seminal black comic book superheroes such as Black Panther, Black Lightning, Storm, Luke Cage, Blade, the Falcon, Nubia, and others, some of whom also appear on the small and large screens, as well as how the imaginary black superhero has come to life in the image of President Barack Obama. Super Black explores how black superheroes are a powerful source of racial meaning, narrative, and imagination in American society that express a myriad of racial assumptions, political perspectives, and fantastic (re)imaginings of black identity. The book also demonstrates how these figures overtly represent or implicitly signify social discourse and accepted wisdom concerning notions of racial reciprocity, equality, forgiveness, and ultimately, racial justice.



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    Chris Rock: Comedian and Actor (Black Americans of Achievement)



    Each title features: - In Their Own Words boxes offering selected quotations from the subject - Did You Know? boxes that highlight fascinating facts about each person - Chronology, suggestions for further reading, and a listing of related Web sites. - A final chapter that delves into the legacy of the subject's thoughts and deeds for new generations of black Americans.



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    One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York



    When Samuel Battle broke the color line as New York City’s first African American cop in the second decade of the twentieth century, he had to fear his racist colleagues as much as criminals. He had to be three times better than his white peers, and many times more resilient. His life was threatened. He was displayed like a circus animal. Yet, fearlessly claiming his rights, he prevailed in a four-decade odyssey that is both the story of one man’s courageous dedication to racial progress and a harbinger of the divisions between police and the people they serve that plague twenty-first-century America.

    By dint of brains, brawn, and an outsized personality, Battle rode the forward wave of African American history in New York. He circulated among renowned turn-of-the-century entertainers and writers. He weathered threatening hostility as a founding citizen of black Harlem. He served as “godfather” to the regiment of black soldiers that won glory in World War I as the “Hellfighters of Harlem.” He befriended sports stars like Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, and Sugar Ray Robinson, and he bonded with legendary tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Along the way, he mentored an equally smart, equally tough young man in a still more brutal fight to integrate the New York Fire Department.

    At the close of his career, Battle looked back proudly on the against-all-odd journey taken by a man who came of age as the son of former slaves in the South. He had navigated the corruption of Tammany Hall, the treachery of gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz, the anything-goes era of Prohibition, the devastation of the Depression, and the race riots that erupted in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s. By then he was a trusted aide to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and a friend to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

    Realizing that his story was the story of race in New York across the first half of the century, Battle commissioned a biography to be written by none other than Langston Hughes, the preeminent voice of the Harlem Renaissance. But their eighty-thousand-word collaboration failed to find a publisher, and has remained unpublished since. Using Hughes’s manuscript, which is quoted liberally throughout this book, as well as his own archival research and interviews with survivors, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Arthur Browne has created an important and compelling social history of New York, revealed a fascinating episode in the life of Langston Hughes, and delivered the riveting life and times of a remarkable and unjustly forgotten man, setting Samuel Battle where he belongs in the pantheon of American civil rights pioneers.



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    Performing Blackness: Enactments of African-American Modernism



    Performing Blackness offers a challenging interpretation of black cultural expression since the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Exploring drama, music, poetry, sermons, and criticism, Benston offers an exciting meditation on modern black performance's role in realising African-American aspirations for autonomy and authority.
    Artists covered include:
    * John Coltrane
    * Ntozake Shange
    * Ed Bullins
    * Amiri Baraka
    * Adrienne Kennedy
    * Michael Harper.
    Performing Blackness is an exciting contribution to the ongoing debate about the vitality and importance of black culture.



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    Voodoo Child: The Illustrated Legend of Jimi Hendrix (Penguin Studio Books)




    Often cited as one of the most innovative and influential rock musicians, guitar legend Jimi Hendrix had a short and turbulent life, succumbing early, as did many other rock icons of his generation, to pressures generated by the conflicts between their creative visions and the economic imperatives of the music industry. He died of an overdose in 1970 at the age of 27. This collaborative tribute to Hendrix, described by one of its creators as "not so much outright biography as speculative fantasy," explores the excitement and the pitfalls of rock stardom sympathetically and perceptively.



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    Tuesday, January 19, 2016

    Routledge Handbook of African Security




    Africa is home to most of the world's current conflicts, and security is a key issue. However, African security can only be understood by employing different levels of analysis: the individual (human security), the state (national/state security), and the region (regional/international security). Each of these levels provides analytical tools for understanding what could be called the "African security predicament" and these debates are animated by the "new security" issues: immigration, small arms transfers, gangs and domestic crime, HIV/AIDS, transnational crime, poverty, and environmental degradation. African security therefore not only presents concrete challenges for international security but provides a real-world context for challenging conventional conceptions of security.

    Drawing together contributions from a wide range of key thinkers in the field, the Routledge Handbook of African Security engages with these debates, and is organized into four parts:

    Part I: The African security predicament in the twenty-first century;
    Part II: Understanding conflict in Africa;
    Part III: Regionalism and Africa;
    Part IV: External influences.
    This Handbook will be of great interest to students of African politics, human security, global security, war and conflict studies, peacebuilding, and IR in general.



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    Monday, January 18, 2016

    Changing Times for Black Professionals (Framing 21st Century Social Issues)



    This book is a study of the challenges, issues, and obstacles facing black professional workers in the United States. Though they have always been a part of the U.S. labor force, black professionals have often been overlooked in media, research, and public opinion. Ironically, however, their experiences offer a particularly effective way to understand how race shapes social life, opportunities, and upward mobility. As the 21st century continues to usher in increasing demographic, social, and economic change to the United States, it is critical to consider the impact this will have on an important sector of the labor force. In this book, I examine the reasons why sociological study of black professional workers is important and valuable, review the literature that examines their experiences in the workplace, and consider the issues and challenges they are likely to face in a rapidly shifting social world.

    The goal of this new, unique Series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today’s social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http://routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html

    For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.



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    Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture



    Katrina Hazzard-Gordon offers the first analysis of the development of the jook—an underground cultural institution created by the black working class—together with other dance arenas in African-American culture. Beginning with the effects of African slaves’ middle passage experience on their traditional dances, she traces the unique and virtually autonomous dance culture that developed in the rural South. Like the blues, these secular dance forms and institutions were brought north and urbanized by migrating blacks. In northern cities, some aspects of black dance became integrated into white culture and commercialized. Focusing on ten African-American dance arenas from the period of enslavement to the mid-twentieth century, this book explores the jooks, honky-tonks, rent parties, and after-hours joints as well as the licensed membership clubs, dance halls, cabarets, and the dances of the black elite.

    Jook houses emerged during the Reconstruction era and can be viewed as a cultural response to freedom. In the jook, Hazzard-Gordon explains, an immeasurable amount of core black culture including food, language, community fellowship, mate selection, music, and dance found a sanctuary of expression when no other secular institution flourished among the folk. The jook and its various derivative forms have provided both entertainment and an economic alternative (such as illegal lotteries and numbers) to people excluded from the dominant economy. Dances like the Charleston, shimmy, snake hips, funky butt, twist, and slow drag originated in the jooks; some can be traced back to Africa.

    Social dancing links black Americans to their African past more strongly than any other aspect of their culture. Citing the significance of dance in the African-American psyche, this study explores the establishments that nurtured ancestral as well as communal links for African-Americans, vividly describing black dances, formal rituals, such as debutante balls, and the influence of black dance on white culture.



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    Truth Stranger Than Fiction: Race, Realism, and the U.S. Literary Marketplace



    Augusta Rohrbach broadens our understanding of the American literary tradition by showing how African American literature and culture greatly influenced the development of realism. Rohrbach traces the influences of the slave narratives—such as the use of authenticating details, as well as dialect, and a frank treatment of the human body—in writings by Howells, Wharton, and others, and explores questions about the shifting relationship between literature and culture in the US from 1830-1930. Beginning with the question, “How might slave narratives—heralded as the first indigenous literature by Theodore Parker—have influenced the development of American Literature?” Rohrbach develops connections between an emerging literary marketplace, the rise of the professional writer, and literary realism.



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    Thursday, January 7, 2016

    Police State: How America's Cops Get Away with Murder

    How does America, founded on the promise of freedom for all, find itself poised to become a police state? In Police State, legendary "country lawyer" Gerry Spence reveals the unnerving truth of our criminal justice system. In his more than sixty years in the courtroom, Spence has never represented a person charged with a crime in which the police hadn't themselves violated the law. Whether by hiding, tampering with, or manufacturing evidence; by gratuitous violence and even murder, those who are charged with upholding the law too often break it. Spence points to the explosion of brutality leading up to the murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, insisting that this is the way it has always been: cops get away with murder. Nothing changes. Police State narrates the shocking account of the Madrid train bombings - how the FBI accused an innocent man of treasonous acts they knew he hadn't committed. It details the rampant racism within Chicago's police department, which landed teenager Dennis Williams on death row. It unveils the deliberately coercive efforts of two cops to extract a false murder confession from frightened and mentally fragile Albert Hancock, along with other appalling evidence from eight of Spence's most famous cases. We all want to feel safe. But how can we be safe when the very police we pay to protect us instead kill us, maim us, and falsify the evidence against us? Can we accept the argument that cops may occasionally overstep their boundaries, but only when handling guilty criminals and never with us? Can we expect them to investigate and prosecute themselves when faced with allegations of misconduct? Can we believe that they are acting for our own good? Too many innocent are convicted; too many are wrongly executed. The cost has become too high for a free people to bear. In Police State, Spence issues a stinging indictment of the American justice system. Demonstrating that the way we select and train our police guarantees fatal abuses of justice, he also prescribes a challenging cure that stands to restore America's promise of liberty and justice for all. Download Link

    Extremist for Love: Martin Luther King Jr., Man of Ideas and Nonviolent Social Action

    In an era where people are often sorted into the categories of 'thinker' and 'doer', Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stands out - a rare mix of the deeply profound thinker and intellect who put the fruit of that reflection into the service of direct social action. In this helpful telling of King's life, Dr. Rufus Burrow knits together the story of King's family, his intellectual journey, and his experience of the pervasive racism of America in that era in a way that highlights the onnections between King's thought and his actions. The result is a renewed understanding of the roots of King's actions and a fresh appreciation for how intellectual activity can impact our world in surprisingly direct ways. Download Link

    The Art of Central Africa: Masterpieces from the Berlin Museum

    The Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin is one of the world's foremost museums of anthropology, and the art of Central Africa is only one of the many strengths of its extensive African holdings. Although these important works have long been known and admired by scholars and collectors of African art through the museum's comprehensive program of publications, they have only occasionally been on public display in its galleries since 1945. The exhibition highlights the Museum für Völkerkunde's collection of Central African sculpture. The Museum für Völkerkunde is now part of the comprehensive seven-museum complex of the Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Dahlem, West Berlin, and was formed in the 1870s and 1880s, decades that saw the creation of many of the world's premier museums of art, natural history, and anthropology. In contrast, The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired its first African sculpture in 1950, and the Museum of Primitive Art, whose collection merged with ours in 1978 and 1979, was founded in 1954. Thus, the African collection at the Metropolitan Museum was not begun until more than seventy years after the creation of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, and consequently it is vastly different in size and scope. Central Africa in particular is one of the areas in which our own collection is not as rich. This show presented a more complete view of Central Africa's major sculptural traditions to our visitors. [This book was originally published in 1990 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.] Download Link

    You're Dead—So What?: Media, Police, and the Invisibility of Black Women as Victims of Homicide

    Though numerous studies have been conducted regarding perceived racial bias in newspaper reporting of violent crimes, few studies have focused on the intersections of race and gender in determining the extent and prominence of this coverage, and more specifically how the lack of attention to violence against women of color reinforces their invisibility in the social structure. This book provides an empirical study of media and law enforcement bias in reporting and investigating homicides of African American women compared with their white counterparts. The author discusses the symbiotic relationship between media coverage and the response from law enforcement to victims of color, particularly when these victims are reported missing and presumed to be in danger by their loved ones. Just as the media are effective in helping to increase police response, law enforcement officials reach out to news outlets to solicit help from the public in locating a missing person or solving a murder. However, a deeply troubling disparity in reporting the disappearance and homicides of female victims reflects racial inequality and institutionalized racism in the social structure that need to be addressed. It is this disparity this important study seeks to solve. Download Link
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