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Issue Contents : : Bookshelf : : Page [ 1 2 3 ]
State Failure and State Weakness
in a Time of Terror
Why did some developing-world nations fail and others collapse after the
Cold War? Contributors to this book, all participants in Harvard University's
Failed States Project, examine 11 nations in various states of disrepair,
including Somalia, Colombia, and Fiji, to determine the causes of failure
and the possibilities for reconstruction. Rotberg is president of the
World Peace Foundation and a program director at Harvard's John
F. Kennedy School of Government.
Somebodies and Nobodies:
Overcoming the Abuse of Rank
Rankism, the abuse of power over a lesser-ranking individual or nation,
leads to indignity, humiliation, and even war, says Fuller, Oberlin
College president from 1970 to 1974. Be it rankism by teachers, employers,
parents,
or others, the behavior transcends race and gender, he says, and can
be eliminated by returning to the basic ideals of democracy. Fuller
served
for many years as chair of Internews, a nonprofit corporation.
Except
for One Obscene Brushstroke
"Dzvinia Orlowsky's new poems, unabashedly carnal and spiritual,
bring me face to face with the human struggle to befriend the strangeness
of being here," writes reviewer Franz Wright '77. "In
reading this book I had the most vivid sensation that I was being allowed
to look inside a woman's head and soul in a way I don't think
I have ever experienced." Orlowsky, a founding editor of Four Way
Books, teaches poetry at the Stonecoast MFA Program for Creative Writing
at the University of Southern Maine.
Last Man Out: The Story of the
Springhill Mine Disaster
Greene, an award-winning journalist, recreates the lives and deaths
of the 19 men trapped one mile underground for nine days following
the 1958
collapse of a coal mine in Nova Scotia. Based on archival reports
and interviews with survivors and their families, Greene retells the
experience
through the eyes of everyone involved, from the rescuers and media
to entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the tragedy. She is the author
of
Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing, both National Book Award
finalists.
Reinventing
the World Bank
The World Bank is failing and can be reformed only through increased
accountability and scrutiny from the outside, say the authors, who
base their observations
on the findings of U.S. and British scholars. Still the world's
leading development institution in size and influence, the bank has failed
to implement a strategy to reduce world poverty. The authors argue the
need for a completely reinvented bank that would undertake a "narrower
range of lending activities, while maintaining public capital flows for
development across a range of countries." Pincus is an economics
instructor at the University of London. Winters is associate professor
of political economy at Northwestern University.
The Ride Together:
A Brother and Sister's Memoir of
Autism in the Family
This brother-sister team has created a compassionate account of life with
their autistic brother, David, born in the 1960s to a middle-class family
in Maryland. Presented in chapters that alternate between Judy's
prose and Paul's descriptive comics (his cartoons appear in The
New Yorker), the memoir offers snapshots of daily life with David--who
recites entire TV shows and uses his own method of communication--while
emphasizing the love and strength inherent in his family. A longtime book
editor, Judy Karasik writes for The New York Times Book Review and The
Boston Globe Magazine.
East toward Dawn: A Woman's Solo Journey around
the World
On the eve of her 60th birthday, following the death of her 22-year-old
son and the end of a 30-year marriage, Natalie Watkins decided to embark
on an around-the-globe trip alone. Traveling across Europe and Asia,
she reconnected with friends, examined the changing roles of women in
non-Western
cultures, and continued her search for the meaning of life. Here, she
shares her stories with humor, intelligence, and poetic wonder.