Hartmut ROSA
Translation : Svetla MARINOVA

Hartmut Rosa (born 1955) is one of the most promising nowadays sociologists and social philosophers, and most of the academics agree his theories are just the “next step” in the brilliant tradition of the German Frankfurt School. The book has been announced to be a new stage of the critical social theory. In this new version it is based on the changing temporal structures of society and their ‘promise’ to solve the crises of the contemporary society toward a newly conceived “good life”.

2015 - 590 pages - 20 cm X 14 cm - ISBN : 978 954 587 194 8
Design : Yana LEVIEVA
Series : « Varius »

Georg SIMMEL
Translation : Theodora KARAMELSKA

Georg Simmel (1858-1918), a notorious German philosopher and sociologist of culture, has prodigiously influenced establishing the subjects of sociology as an university discipline. Our original collection of texts consists in essays in sociology of culture. This is namely in these “small sociological forms” that Simmel reaches to a brilliant (incl. in its literary style) representation of some aspects of his diagnosis of modernity. Simmel is presenting here a sort of „snapshots sub specie aeternitatis“ in order to manifest that the „sociological objective” is able to catch out social phenomena as “lie”, “fashion”, “gratitude”, “faithfulness”, etc. – ones that construct the life of the society in its dimensions of intelligibility and mysteriousness.

2014 - 268 pages - 20 cm X 13 cm - ISBN : 978 954 587 185 6
Design : Yana LEVIEVA
Series : « Varius »

Robert WALSER ; Giorgio AGAMBEN
Translation : Maria DOBREVSKA

This is the chef-d-oeuvre of the prose of Robert Walser (1878-1956) – a very sophisticated and incredibly fine, even fragile piece of text of an author who appeared to be the favourite one of genius like W. Benjamin, F. Kafka, H. Hesse. Our edition is unique because of including also a brilliant piece of text by one of the most famous nowadays philosophers, Giorgio Agamben.

2014 - 126 pages - 20 cm X 13 cm - ISBN : 978 954 587 179 5
Design : Yana LEVIEVA
Series : « Transversalia »

David AUSTIN

In the 1960s, for at least a brief moment, Montreal became what seemed an unlikely centre of Black Power and the Caribbean left. In October 1968 the Congress of Black Writers at McGill University brought together well-known Black thinkers and activists from Canada, the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean–people like C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Miriam Makeba, Rocky Jones, and Walter Rodney. Within months of the Congress, a Black-led protest at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) exploded on the front pages of newspapers across the country–raising state security fears about Montreal as the new hotbed of international Black radical politics.

Fear of a Black Nation won the 2014 Casa de las Americas Prize in Caribbean Literature in English or Creole and was a silver medalist in the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Awards - Best Regional Non-Fiction (Canada-East).

2013 ; 256 pages ; 152 x 228 mm ;
ISBN (Paperback) : 9781771130103 | $34.95 CAD
ISBN (Digital) : 9781771130110 | $23.95 CAD

Stephen D’ARCY

“What we must see,” Martin Luther King once insisted, “is that a riot is the language of the unheard.” In this new era of global protest and popular revolt, Languages of the Unheard draws on King’s insight to address a timely and controversial topic : the ethics and politics of militant resistance.
Using vivid examples from the history of militancy—including armed actions by Weatherman and the Red Brigades, the LA Riots, the Zapatista uprising, the Mohawk land defence at Kanesatake, the Black Blocs at summit protests, the occupations of Tahrir Square and Zuccotti Park, the Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz, the Quebec Student Strike, and many more—this book will be of interest to democratic theorists and moral philosophers, and practically useful for protest militants attempting to grapple with the moral ambiguities and political dilemmas unique to their distinctive position.
Stephen D’Arcy is an associate professor of philosophy at Huron University College, Western University. A long-time social activist and protest organizer, he teaches and writes about democratic theory and practical ethics.

2013 ; 232 pages ; 152 x 228 mm ;
ISBN (Paperback) : 9781771131063 | $24.95 CAD
ISBN (Digital) : 9781771131070 | $17.50 CAD

Karen MESSING

In 1978, when workers at a nearby phosphate refinery learned that the ore they processed was contaminated with radioactive dust, Karen Messing, then a new professor of molecular genetics, was called in to help. Unsure of what to do with her discovery that exposure to the radiation was harming the workers and their families, Messing contacted senior colleagues but they wouldn’t help. Neither the refinery company nor the scientific community was interested in the scary results of her chromosome studies.
Over the next decades Messing encountered many more cases of workers around the world—factory workers, cleaners, checkout clerks, bank tellers, food servers, nurses, teachers—suffering and in pain without any help from the very scientists and occupational health experts whose work was supposed to make their lives easier. Arguing that rules for scientific practice can make it hard to see what really makes workers sick, in Pain and Prejudice Messing tells the story of how she went from looking at test tubes to listening to workers.
Karen Messing is an award-winning (including a Governor General of Canada award and YWCA (Montreal) Women of Distinction) and internationally recognized expert on occupational health. She is the author of more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific articles and the book One-eyed Science : Occupational Health and Working Women. She is also the editor of Integrating Gender in Ergonomic Analysis, which has been translated into six languages.

2014 ; 168 pages ; 152 x 228 mm ;
ISBN (Paperback) : 9781771131476 | $24.95 CAD
ISBN (Digital) : 9781771131483 | $17.50 CAD

Ruth WALTON

An educational resource to help children explore the issue of fair trade by allowing them to see through the eyes of the children of banana farmers in the Windward Islands. The author spent time with the farmers’ families and she uses the real-life narratives of two young children going about their daily activities to show how bananas grow, problems such as hurricanes which can affect the crop, how they are picked and transported and how they end up in our stores.

The main story is illustrated with colorful collages made from painted textures and photographs from the Islands. Interspersed in the story are boxes with maps, facts and photos giving more detail on the places and methods and challenges. Its ends with banana recipes and ’bigger picture’ descriptions, maps and photos of where bananas come from and examples of social premium funded projects.

With plenty of points for discussion Juliana’s Bananas will give girls and boys an insight into the lives of children like them in the Caribbean and how fair trade premiums help communities all over the world build better living conditions.

Ruth WALTON is skilled in many areas of book design, including illustration, layout and typography. She produces educational books using a combination of letterpress, illustration, collage and photography. She illustrated the « Let’s Find Out series » for Franklin WATTS.

September 2014 - pages : 32 - 212 x 178 mm (landscape) - price : £8.99 / £9.95 - ISBN : 978-1-78026-1-805 (eBook ISBN : 978-1-78026-181-2)

Richard SWIFT

An investigation of the alternatives to capitalism, including socialism, anarchism and deep ecology.

Financial collapse and crisis ; disgust at bankers’ greed ; the devastating effects of yawning inequality : all these and more have led to widespread dissatisfaction and disenchantment with capitalism. people are crying out for an alternative but are continually told that one does not exist.

Richard SWIFT proves this to be wrong with style and assurance. With capitalism vulnerable and out-of-step in the wake of financial crises this book investigates the alternatives that are on offer - including socialism, social democracy, anarchism, ecology and degrowth.

Combining the practical with the visionary, he shows that finding alternatives to capitalism is no longer an academic issue for the left – it is an urgent planetary necessity.

Richard SWIFT is a former editor of New Internationalist magazine and author of the « No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy ». In 2011 he won the Daniel Singer Millenium Prize for an original essay which helps further socialist ideas.

April 2014 - pages : 208 - 216 x 138 mm (paperback) - price : £9.99 / $16.95 - ISBN : 9781780261706 (eBook ISBN : 978-1-78026-171-3)

Peter HUDSON

The author has been visiting the same village in Mauritania on the remote edge of the Sahara for over twenty years. This is the story of his most recent journey there – an intense and engaging day-by-day account through which global change and inequality are made human.

The Sahel – the ‘shore’ of the Sahara – is where cultures, customs and climates meet, merge and clash. Through the numerous characters we meet and from the obviously deep and sympathetic nature of the relationship the author has with the local people, with whom he now runs agricultural projects, we learn of the realities of life in one of the harshest, most marginalised and but also quietly inspiring corners of the world.

Searingly honest and refreshing, this is a superbly written piece of travel writing about a little-known part of the world. The author gets under the surface and gives a sensitive account of what life is like. He understands not just the culture and complex social dealings but also how economics and geo-political forces that can profoundly affect the lives of individuals in a remote community.

Illustrated with maps and line drawings « Under An African Sky » is a unique journey – for the armchair traveller and those interested in development, climate change and global politics and economics.

Peter HUDSON runs an international development charity based in Mauritania in West Africa. He has travelled widely in the region and has written several books including « Leaf in the Wind », « Travels in Mauritania » and « Two Rivers ».

September 2014 - pages : 240 - 216 x 138 mm (paperback) - price : £9.99 / $16.95 - ISBN : 978-1-78026-178-2 (eBook ISBN : 978-1-78026-179-9)

Karen LAZAR

“Home is as old as one’s skin but as elusive as an object seen through the wrong end of a telescope.” It is this sense of a view, skewed, intangible, which echoes throughout Karen Lazar’s Hemispheres. Waking in hospital after a post-operative stroke, she finds one side of her body paralysed and her world knocked out of kilter. Spatial, perceptual and subjective changes force her to view her new life in facets. The fragmented view is made apparent by means of a triptych of clusters which charts Karen’s experience from Metamorphosis, through Rehabilitation and Adaptation. Quietly reflective, deeply lyrical, Hemispheres is concerned with returning separated parts into a whole and coming home to the self.

Praise from Isabel Hofmeyr, Professor of African Literature, Wits University :
“ ‘A stroke on one hemisphere of the brain crosses over to manifest … on the opposite side of the body’.

What does it mean to find oneself suddenly living at this lethal crossing ? This exquisite book illuminates how to live with and beyond loss. A superb filigree of acute and finely-crafted pieces, Hemispheres narrates the journey of re-composing life, joy and love from the ‘foreign citadel’ of a body made alien through stroke.

Wry, ironic, comic, joyous, desolate, celebratory, surreal, this mosaic of feeling reconfigures love from loss ; each subtle fragment a tessera against time.

As the pieces delve deep into the self, they reach beyond it. The rehabilitation hospital reeks of personal loss even as it becomes a microcosm of contemporary South Africa. Broken bodies deformed by carnage and violence accumulate in the ward. The medical hierarchy enacts deep-seated forms of South African authoritarianism, the losses of the past inflicted and self-inflicted in petty and cruel ways.

The book becomes a quiet odyssey of affirming life in the face of death. The pieces themselves, weightless and profound, light and dark, half and whole, mirror the contradictions of wrenching life from loss.”

Praise from Joanne Fedler :
“A collection of rare/nuanced and tender insights. Lazar takes us into the gyre of re-orientation post-stroke, sharing what is lost and what is claimed when what you’ve always been and known, changes. A book that pulses with quiet courage and celebrates it in others.”

Karen LAZAR is an English educator at the Wits School of Education. Her MA and Phd, both from Wits, are in South African gender studies. This is Karen’s first volume of (first person) creative nonfiction. Karen had a stroke in 2001, from which she has partially recovered. She lives in Johannesburg.

Publication date : May 2011 - 88 pages - format:136 x 210 mm - price : R145 - ISBN : 978-1-920397-24-1

Jennifer THORPE (author and editor) - the contributors include : Jen THORPE, Karabo KGOLENG (well known radio and media personality), Sarah BRITTEN, and Dorothy BLACK, as well as many other women.

Do you remember your first time ?
As women, we all have a story within us about a sexual experience that was unforgettable. Perhaps it was incredible, earth shattering, life-changing, and wonderful. Perhaps it wasn’t romantic or pleasurable, but awkward, painful or forced upon us. Many of us have kept our experiences secret because, by exposing our stories, we expose ourselves and our feelings around sex.

In My First Time, Southern African women have shared their stories about their significant first time experiences of sex and sexuality. This is a collection of honest, powerful, and brave accounts. Some joyful, others funny and some heartbreaking, but all of them important for women, and hopefully men, to read.

This is the perfect book for you to read to reflect on your own first times. This is the perfect book to share with your mother, siblings, and friends.

Jennifer THORPE is a feminist writer. She’s passionate about sharing women’s stories and women’s writing. She is the creator and curator of stories for the My First Time project and the editor of FeministsSA.com. Jennifer has an MA in Politics from Rhodes University and is studying towards an MA in Creative Writing at UCT. She lives in Cape Town with her boyfriend Mike and her two cats.

Publication date : September 2012 - 174 pages - format : 136 X 210 mm - price : R160 - ISBN : 978-1-920590048

Yewande OMOTOSO

Praise for Bom Boy from Nuruddin Farah, author of Links, Knots & Crossbones :
"This is a novel bursting with elegance, written by a young author
brimming with genuine promise. Yewande Omotoso is a stylist with a
literary vision."

Praise for Bom Boy from Joanne Hichens, author of Divine Justice :
’Bom Boy surprises and delights, sings at turns, as it straddles the past and the present, bringing into focus cultural beliefs while examining the intimacies and complexities of bonds of family and friendship. What strikes me most is the originality. This fine debut, firmly rooted in contemporary consciousness, is story-telling of note which whets the appetite for more.’

Leke is a troubled young man living in the suburbs of Cape Town. He develops strange habits of stalking people, stealing small objects and going from doctor to doctor in search of companionship rather than cure. Through a series of letters written to him by his Nigerian father whom he has never met, Leke learns about a family curse ; a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Bom Boy is a well-crafted and complex narrative written with a sensitive understanding of both the smallness and magnitude of a single life.

Yewande OMOTOSO was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria with her Nigerian father, West Indian mother and two older brothers. She and her family moved to South Africa in 1992 and have lived there ever since. She is an architect ; space and buildings being a passion of hers second only to words and literature. She currently lives in Cape Town working as a designer, freelance writer and novelist.

Publication date : September 2011 - 272 pages - format : 135 X 210 mm - price : R180 - ISBN : 978-1-920397-35-7

Climate Change, Peak Oil, and Food Insecurity - by Vandana Shiva

« One of the world’s most prominent radical scientists. »
— The Guardian

« The South’s best-known environmentalist. »
— New Internationalist

CLIMATE CHANGE will dramatically alter how we live and is already affecting the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people.
In Soil Not Oil, bestselling author Vandana Shiva connects the food crisis, peak oil, and climate change to show that a world beyond a dependence on fossil fuel and globalization is both possible and necessary. Bold and visionary, Shiva reveals how three crises are inherently linked and that any attempt to solve one without addressing the others will get us nowhere.
Condemning industrial agriculture and industrial biofuels as recipes for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva’s champion is the small, independent farm. What we need most in a time of changing climates and millions hungry, she argues, are sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are more resistant to disease, drought, and flood. Calling for a return to local economies and small-scale food production, Shiva outlines our remaining options ; a market-centred shortterm escape for the privileged, which will deepen the crisis for the poor and marginalized, or a people-centred fossil-fuel-free future, which will offer a decent living for all.
Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist. A leader in the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin and the Slow Food movement. Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) in 1993. She is the author of many books, including Manifestos on the Future of Food & Seed (2007), and Globalization’s New Wars : Seed, Water & Life Forms (Women Unlimited, 2005). Before becoming an activist, Vandana Shiva was one of India’s leading physicists.

May 2009 - 164 pages - paperback - Rs. 225 - ISBN : 978-81-88965-55-3

Sexual Economies in Contemporary Bombay Cinema - by Karen Gabriel

This insightful analysis of popular Bombay cinema presents a comprehensive discussion of its contemporary history, background, financing and social and political underpinnings. It maps the cultural landscape of this medium, tracing the relationship between the state, cinema and society. It reviews the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated in the organisation of images, and demonstrates how heterosexuality operates as a stabiliser within this constellation. More generally, it looks at the emergence of heroes and anti-heroes, at the changing faces of masculinity, at femininity and the regulation of desire, and at Bollywood’s construction of gender, sexuality and the nation.

Karen Gabriel is currently Fellow, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi. She has taught at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and works on issues of gender and sexuality.

350 pages - paperback - Rs. 450 - ISBN : 81-88965-49-9

Edited by
Samir Kumar Das & Rada Ivekovic

Terror has had different philosophies in history ; and philosophies have their own engagement with terror. Can these two realities be judged historically ? The question is important not only because today’s world is marked by different kinds of terror – individual, state, anarchist, revolutionary, religious, communal, but that these have different ideological and philosophical justifications which must be understood in their differential particularities, especially when these particularities are sought to be obliterated by the use of the term, ‘terrorism’, and its perceived practitioners as ‘terrorists’.
This book includes papers on important issues such as : terror as historical event ; terror as a generalised discourse of ideology ; terror as a feature in the continuum of violence ; terror as ‘extreme violence’ ; war on terror, and the need for legitimacy ; race, gender, difference, and the instruments of colonial terror ; the early nationalists as the early terrorists ; post-colonialism, societies, and terror ; terror as the final marker of identity ascribed, undertaken, imposed ; Enlightenment on terror and Philosophy’s engagement with terror.
The contributors include well-known international academics and philosophers : Artemy Magun ; Ivaylo Ditchev ; Stephen Wright ; Daho Djerbal ; Ranabir Samaddar ; Didier Bigo ; Paula Banerjee ; Virgilio Alfonso da Silva ; Pradip Kumar Bose ; Alain Brossat, Samir Kumar Das ; Shahnaz Rouse ; Bechir Chourou ; Boyan Manchev ; and Francisco Naishtat. The editors are Samir Kumar Das, Professor at Calcutta University, political scientist, and author and editor of many publications ; and Rada Ivekovic, Professsor of Philosophy and Programme Director at the Collège international de philosophie, and has written several books.

October 2009 - 300 pages - ISBN : 81-88965-56-1

Cultural Climate of Turkey

by Vitrinde Yaşamak (1992) and Kötü Çocuk Türk (2001)

A collection of essays on Turkey’�s cultural climate in the last decades from a most insightful literary and cultural critic. The first two essays of this collection, « Life in the Shop Window » and « Return of the Repressed », attend to the 80�’s � a period of radical economic, political and cultural change following the coup d�état of 1980. Nurdan Gürbilek argues that this was not only a period of oppression of speech but also a period of explosion of speech ; an incitement to speech. A period when two seemingly opposed cultural strategies, the old one of repression, forbiddance and annihilation and the new one of provocation, assimilation and incorporation came together, weaving a cultural fabric that had significant results in shaping the cultural climate of modern Turkey. Gürbilek also argues that this was a period of cultural pluralism� - a result of the collapse of the modern Kemalist identity. Years of the « return of the repressed » ; the voices that were previously repressed by the Kemalist project of modernization, the voices of the Islamic and Kurdish opposition, those of the lower and peripheral cultures, of women and queers and also the discourses of desire and sexuality returned to a relatively liberal cultural market ready to incorporate rather than suppress.
The following essays on Turkishness and evil explore the rather sinister cultural climate of the 1990�s and 2000�s when the efforts to redefine the Turkish identity predominated the cultural scene. She takes as her point of departure some of the significant images and tropes in modern Turkish literature and popular culture : popular arabesque songs of the 70s and 80s, the figure of the snob in modern Turkish literature, a news article on the death of a porn star, an oddly popular poster illustration, the child hero archetype in urban popular culture� With utmost care and justice Gürbilek weaves these into a keen understanding of their political, social and cultural significance, exploring Turkishness not as an autonomous and essentialist local truth but rather as an impasse always already shaped in relation to the modern world, as a double-bind that has always produced oppositional sentiments in the cultural sphere. This is where the desire to be the other coincides with the fear of losing one�s self in the other, where xenophilia is simultaneous with xenophobia, and the feeling of inadequacy is concurrent with a reflex of self-defense. And evil here has to do with the unleashing of all things dark and sinister when the liberal promise fails to deliver, when the shop windows cease to dazzle and the struggle for livelihood turns bitter in urban wilderness. Where do « Turkishness » and « evil » converge ? And how do we gain insight into these moments of convergence ?

By Bilge Karasu

In an ancient Mediterranean city, a tradition is maintained : every ten years an archaic game of human chess is staged, the players (visitors versus locals) bearing weapons. This archaic game, the central event of The Garden of the Departed Cats, may prove as fatal as the deadly attraction our narrator feels for the local man who is the Vizier, or Captain, of the home team. Their « romance » (which, though inconclusive, magnetizes our protagonist to accept the Vizier’s challenge to play) provides the skeletal structure of this experimental novel. Each of their brief interactions works as a single chapter. And interleaved between their chapters are a dozen fable-like stories. The folk tale might concern a 13th-century herbal that identifies a kind of tulip, a « red salamander, » which dooms anyone who eats it to never tell a lie ever again. Or the tale might be an ancient story of a terrible stoat-like creature that feeds for years on the body of whomever it sinks its claws into, like guilt. These strange fables work independently of the main narrative but, in curious and unpredictable ways, (and reminiscent of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table), they echo and double its chief themes : love, its recalcitrance, its cat-like finickiness, and its refusal to be rushed. The Garden of the Departed Cats is a work of peculiar beauty and strangeness, the whole layered and shiny like a piece of mica.

Istanbul Culminating Session, 23-27 June 2005

Müge Gürsoy Sökmen (ed.)

« The records have to be kept and, by definition, the perpetrators, far from keeping records, try to destroy them. They are killers of the innocent and of memory. The records are required to inspire still further the mounting opposition to the new global tyranny. The new tyrants, incomparably over-armed, can win every war � both military and economic. Yet they are losing the war (this is how they call it) of communication. They are not winning the support of world public opinion. More and more people are saying no. Finally this will be the tyranny�s undoing. But after how many more tragedies, invasions and collateral disasters ? After how much more of the new poverty the tyranny engenders ? Hence the urgency of keeping records, of remembering, of assembling the evidence, so that the accusations become unforgettable, and proverbial on every continent. More and more people are going to say no, for this is the precondition today for saying yes to all we are determined to save and everything we love. »
� John Berger, from his message of support to the WTI

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) was a collective effort involving hundreds of people worldwide, most of whom never met in person. About twenty sessions were held in various cities of the world, focusing on different aspects of the war on Iraq. The findings of these sessions were incorporated into a culminating session held in Istanbul on 23-27 June 2005. This book consists of the proceedings of that session.
A civilian initiative inspired by the Bertrand Russell Tribunal of the Vietnam Era, the WTI aimed to record the crimes committed in Iraq, to note the historical, economic and political reasons behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq, to document the extent as well as the details of the destruction caused, and to write a counter-history to that of the victors�. The texts in this volume, an assemblage of experts� and witnesses� testimonies, provides a comprehensive grasp on what an invasion today means.
We hope that this book, which is the result of a worldwide effort involving activists, lawyers and experts from diverse backgrounds, that is, a product of the global opposition to war, will feed back into the global movement, inspire new forms of resistance, providing information and grounds for action, be it for appeals to the International Criminal Court or the United Nations, or for the individual acts of resistance, including that of conscientious objectors.

The Asian American Superhero Antholog - Edited by Jeff Yang, Parry Shen, Keith Chow, and Jerry Ma

Appealing to both comics fans and Asian Americans seeking to claim their place in American culture, Secret Identities makes brilliant use of the conventions of the superhero comic book to expose the real face of the Asian American experience.

This groundbreaking graphic anthology brings together leading Asian American creators in the comics industry—including Gene Yang (National Book Award finalist for American Born Chinese), Bernard Chang (Wonder Woman), Greg Pak (The Hulk), and Christine Norrie (Black Canary Wedding Special )—to craft original graphical short stories set in a compelling “shadow history” of our country : from the building of the railroads to the Japanese American internment, the Vietnam airlift, the murder of Vincent Chin, and the incarceration of D^r. Wen Ho Lee.

Entertaining and enlightening, Secret Identities offers whiz-bang action, searing satire, and thoughtful commentary from a community too often overlooked by the cultural mainstream, while showcasing a vivid cross-section of the talents whose imagination and creativity is driving the contemporary comics renaissance.

Jeff Yang was the founder of the pioneering Asian American periodical aMagazine. The author of three books and the biweekly column “Asian Pop” for the San Francisco Chronicle, he lives in Brooklyn, New York. Parry Shen, best known for his lead role in the movie Better Luck Tomorrow, lives in Southern California. Keith Chow, an educator and comics journalist, lives in Maryland. Jerry Ma, the founder of the indie comics studio Epic Proportions, lives in New York City.

$21.95 / £15.99
Pub Date : Spring 2009
Format : paperback
Trim : 8 x 10, 192 pages
ISBN : 978-1-59558-398-7

Baseball and the Rise (and Fall) of the American Way Abroad - by Robert Elias

Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American ? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe ? The Empire Strikes Out gives us the sweeping story of how baseball and America are intertwined in the export of “the American way.”

From the Civil War to George W. Bush and the Iraq War, we see baseball’s role in developing the American empire, first at home and then beyond our shores. And from Albert Spalding and baseball’s first World Tour to Bud Selig and the World Baseball Classic, we witness the globalization of America’s national pastime and baseball’s role in spreading the American dream. Besides describing baseball’s frequent and often surprising connections to America’s presence around the world, Elias assesses the effects of this relationship both on our foreign policies and on the sport itself and asks whether baseball can play a positive role or rather only reinforce America’s dominance around the globe. Like Franklin Foer in How Soccer Explains the World, Elias is driven by compelling stories, unusual events, and unique individuals. His seamless integration of original research and compelling analysis makes this a baseball book that’s about more than just sports.

Robert Elias teaches law and politics at the University of San Francisco. He’s the author and editor of eight books, most recently Baseball and the American Dream, and a baseball novel, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

$27.95 / £10.99
Pub Date : Fall 2009
Format : hardcover
Trim : 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 416 pages
ISBN : 978-1-59558-195-2

The Purging of Muslim Spain - by Matthew Carr

In April 1609, King Philip III of Spain signed an edict denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates. Later that year, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory, on threat of death.

In a brutal and traumatic exodus, entire families and communities were obliged to abandon homes and villages where they had lived for generations, leaving their property in the hands of their Christian neighbors. In Aragon and Catalonia, Muslims were escorted by government commissioners who forced them to pay whenever they drank water from a river or took refuge in the shade.

For five years the expulsion continued to grind on, until an estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory, nearly 5 percent of the total population. By 1614 Spain had successfully implemented what was then the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history, and Muslim Spain had effectively ceased to exist.

Blood and Faith is celebrated journalist Matthew Carr’s riveting chronicle of this virtually unknown episode, set against the vivid historical backdrop of the history of Muslim Spain. Here is a remarkable window onto a little-known period in modern Europe—a rich and complex tale of competing faiths and beliefs, of cultural oppression and resistance against overwhelming odds.

Matthew Carr is a writer, broadcaster, and journalist and the author of The Infernal Machine (The New Press). He lives in Derbyshire, England.

$28.95
Pub Date : Fall 2009
Format : hardcover
Trim : 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 368 pages
ISBN : 978-1-59558-361-1