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The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood
Contrary to the denials by ultra-conservative bishops in recent months, most of us are painfully familiar with images of the Holocaust and all associated with it. Today, there are memorials and museums, here and abroad, to help us remember and educate. The Shame of Survival is yet another small piece to the puzzle in understanding one of the darkest times in our history. It is an honest account of surviving under Nazism and coming to terms with the ideologies inflicted on a young, impressionable mind.
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For the Love of Murphy's: The Behind-the-CounterStory of a Great American Retailer
If you lived in Shelbyville, Hancock, Napoleon, West Newton, or any number of small towns throughout the eastern and midwestern United States during your childhood, chances are that you had a Murphy’s store in your backyard. Now a lost treasure, G.C. Murphy Company stores dotted the map from the Canadian border in the North to the Rio Grande in the South and places in between. The popular five-and-ten-cent chain offered a variety of shopping experiences for the retail senses. Cosmetics, candy, toys, produce, hardware, apparel—and the famous lunch counter—linger as memories in the hearts and minds of loyal patrons. For the Love of Murphy's traces the intimate history of this retail icon, headquartered in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
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Choosing Equality: Essays and Narratives on the Desegregation Experience
Fifty years have passed since the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This famous case, along with its more recent counterpart, Parents Involved v. Seattle School District, is the focal point of discussion on school desegregation in Choosing Equality. Former Delaware Senator and Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. opens with a foreword highlighting that the fight for equality is far from over, despite some progress in the past 50 years. This unique work, divided into three sections, weaves the voices of many expert contributors into one core message: the fight for desegregation
and equality did not end 50 years ago with the decision from Brown, but continues today.
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Counterfeit Amateurs: An Athlete's Journey Through the Sixties to the Age of Academic Capitalism
The debate over big-time college sports, never far from the front pages, has once again moved from simmering to hot. Congress has been investigating the tax-exempt status of the NCAA in part because of questions about how commercialized college sports contribute to educational values. Athletes are challenging the NCAA on antitrust grounds to get a bigger share of the revenue. Against this backdrop, more faculty are beginning to be concerned about what is happening at their own universities and to the educational system as a whole as rampant commercialism further invades campus life through big-time sports. Counterfeit Amateurs discusses this hot topic from a former athlete's perspective.
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Confessions of a Spoilsport: My Life and HardTimes
Fighting Sports Corruption
at an Old Eastern UniversityWilliam Dowling, Distinguished Professor of English and American Literature at Rutgers University, tells the story of the Rutgers 1000 group of alumni, faculty, staff, and students and their losing battle for the institution’s academic soul and intellectual integrity. In Confessions of a Spoilsport: My Life and Hard Times Fighting Sports Corruption at an Old Eastern University, Professor Dowling gives his first-hand account of the fight against commercialized college athletics at his university.
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Homeland
Mythology:
Biblical Narratives in American Culture
Though the Age of Enlightenment long ago theoretically resolved the question of how religious belief can coexist with rational understanding in human affairs, debates over the appropriate place for religion in American political life continue to rage today. In his new book Homeland Mythology, NYU Professor Christopher Collins argues that no modern American presidency has more successfully injected fundamentalist Christian theology into what was once a presumptively secular democracy than President George W. Bush’s administration.
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The
Art and Science of William Bartram
In Charles Frazier’s 1997 National Book Award winning
novel Cold Mountain the hero, Inman, begins his quest through
the American south armed only with a pistol and a tattered copy
of William Bartram’s Travels. Bartram’s Travels continues to be renowned as an example of early-American
travel writing, as an important historical document of the American
South and its native peoples, and as an essential scientific documentation
of the region’s flora and fauna. The
Art and Science of William Bartram recounts Bartram’s
life and his famous journey.
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