Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how... he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs....

Recalling the agony of growing up as an obsessive-compulsive religious fanatic, Traig fearlessly confesses the most peculiar behaviour - like scrubbing... her hands for a full half-hour before meals, feeding her stuffed animals before herself, and washing everything she owned because she thought it was contaminated by pork fumes!

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board... of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life. In 1949, Florida’s orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day’s end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as “the Groveland Boys.” And so began the chain of events that would bring Thurgood Marshall, the man known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” into the deadly fray. Associates thought it was suicidal for him to wade into the “Florida Terror” at a time when he was irreplaceable to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but the lawyer would not shrink from the fight—not after the Klan had murdered one of Marshall’s NAACP associates involved with the case and Marshall had endured continual threats that he would be next. Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI’s unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund files, King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as “one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.”

This remarkable and symbolic novel centers around Wariinga's tragedy and uses it to tell a story of contemporary Kenya faced with the "satan of... capitalism." Ngugi has directed his writing even more firmly towards the commitment that he shows in Writers in Politics and Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary. The novel was written secretly in prison on the only available material -- lavatory paper. It was discovered when almost complete but unexpectedly returned to him on his release. Such was the demand for the original Gikuyu edition that it reprinted on publication.

Since the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls were released in 1992, there has been an explosion of interest in them. This volume explores the issue of... apocalypticism in the Scrolls; how the notions of the 'end', Messianic expectation and eternal life affected the Dead Sea sect, influenced Judaism and filtered into Christianity. Collins' volume provides a valuable and accessible introduction to the interpretation of the Scrolls, which is an informative addition to the series examining the major themes of the Scroll texts.

The West is popularly perceived as America's last outpost of unfettered opportunity, but twentieth-century corporate tourism has transformed it into... America's "land of opportunism." From Sun Valley to Santa Fe, towns throughout the West have been turned over to outsiders--and not just to those who visit and move on, but to those who stay and control. Although tourism has been a blessing for many, bringing economic and cultural prosperity to communities without obvious means of support or allowing towns on the brink of extinction to renew themselves; the costs on more intangible levels may be said to outweigh the benefits and be a devil's bargain in the making. Hal Rothman examines the effect of twentieth-century tourism on the West and exposes that industry's darker side. He tells how tourism evolved from Grand Canyon rail trips to Sun Valley ski weekends and Disneyland vacations, and how the post-World War II boom in air travel and luxury hotels capitalized on a surge in discretionary income for many Americans, combined with newfound leisure time. From major destinations like Las Vegas to revitalized towns like Aspen and Moab, Rothman reveals how the introduction of tourism into a community may seem innocuous, but residents gradually realize, as they seek to preserve the authenticity of their communities, that decision-making power has subtly shifted from the community itself to the newly arrived corporate financiers. And because tourism often results in a redistribution of wealth and power to "outsiders," observes Rothman, it represents a new form of colonialism for the region. By depicting the nature of tourism in the American West through true stories of places and individuals that have felt its grasp, Rothman doesn't just document the effects of tourism but provides us with an enlightened explanation of the shape these changes take. Deftly balancing historical perspective with an eye for what's happening in the region right now, his book sets new standards for the study of tourism and is one that no citizen of the West whose life is touched by that industry can afford to ignore. This book is part of the Development of Western Resources series.

In a sexual frenzy, Mina Montério tries to lose both herself and the phantoms that have haunted her since she left Guadeloupe, but she cannot elude the... ghost of her beloved sister Rosalia, who burned to death in a fire Mina escaped. Ultimately, in the company of a tormented man recently released from a mental hospital, Mina returns to Piment, her birthplace, to unravel the mystery of her family’s curse.Sorting through stories of quarrels and betrayals, incest and rivalry, black magic and sorcery, the two find what they seek: the key to what tortures them. Through their quest, Gisèle Pineau explores the questions of migration, exile, and return that have distinguished her work among Francophone writers within the Creole tradition. An intensely felt and strikingly original tale, Devil’s Dance shows Pineau’s genius for mapping the lost soul in search of itself.

"She writes lyric, luminous prose; her craft is so strong it becomes transparent, and, like the best of storytellers, she knows how to get out of the... way so that the story can tell itself."SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLEMoses Bailey, a preacher's son, forbade his fiddle-loving wife Kate Malone to play. But while he was gone on his travels, looking for God, Kate couldn't help herself, and began fiddling for her three children. For the love of music, Kate is willing to defy anyone who tries to stop her. From generation to generation, the gift and love of music cannot be stopped, and no Malone is immune from its spell.

"The most clear and engaging history of the deadly, historic partnership between Western powers and political Islam."--Salon.comDevil's Game is the... first comprehensive account of America's misguided efforts, stretching across decades, to dominate the strategically vital Middle East by courting and cultivating Islamic fundamentalism. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with dozens of policy makers and CIA, Pentagon, and foreign service officials, Robert Dreyfuss follows the trail of American collusion from support for the Muslim Brotherhood in 1950s Egypt, to links with Khomeini and Afghani jihadists, to longstanding ties between radical Islamists and the leading banks of the West. The result is as tragic as it is paradoxical: originally deployed as pawns to foil nationalism and communism, extremist mullahs and ayatollahs now dominate the landscape, thundering against freedom of thought, science, women's rights, secularism--and their former patron. Chronicling a history of double-dealing, cynical exploitation, and humiliating embarrassment that continues to this day, Devil's Game reveals a pattern that, far from furthering democracy or security, ensures a future of blunders and blowback.

"Free the West Memphis Three." Maybe you've heard the phrase. But do you know why their story is so alarming? Do you know the facts? The guilty... verdicts handed out to three Arkansas teens in a horrific capital murder case were popular in their home state -- even upheld on appeal. But after two HBO documentaries called attention to the witch-hunt atmosphere at the trials, artists and other supporters raised concerns about the accompanying lack of evidence. Now, award-winning journalist Mara Leveritt provides the most comprehensive look yet into this endlessly shocking case. For weeks in 1993, after the murders of three eight-year-old boys, police in West Memphis, Arkansas, seemed stymied. Then suddenly, detectives charged three teenagers -- alleged members of a satanic cult -- with the killings. Despite stunning investigative blunders, a confession riddled with errors, and an absence of physical evidence linking any of the accused to the crime, the teenagers were tried and convicted. Jurors sentenced Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley to life in prison. They sentenced Damien Echols, the accused ringleader, to death. Ten years later, all three remain in prison. Here, Leveritt unravels this seemingly medieval case and offers close-up views of its key participants, including one with an uncanny knack for evading the law....

The third of Dostoevsky's five major novels, Devils (1871-2), also known as The Possessed, is at once a powerful political tract and a profound study of... atheism, depicting the disarray that follows the appearance of a band of modish radicals in a small provincial town. This new translation includes the chapter "Stavrogin's confession," initially censored by Dostoevsky's publisher.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Contemporary misogyny and antisemitism have their roots in the demonization of women and Jews in medieval Christendom. In church art and mass preaching,... the construct of the devil as an outcast from heaven and the source of all evil was linked both to the conception of women as sensual and malicious figures betraying man's soul on its arduous journey to salvation and to the notion of Jews as treacherous dissidents in the Christian landscape. These stereotypes, widely disseminated for over three hundred years, persist today. The exemplum, or cautionary story incorporated into preachers' manuals and popular homilies, was an important mode of religious teaching for clerical and lay folk alike. Sermon narratives drawn from Hindu mythology, Arab storytelling, and secular folktales entertained all classes of medieval society while dispensing theological and cultural instruction. In Devils, Women, and Jews, the vital genre of the medieval sermon story is, for the first time, made accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike. Rendered in modern English, the tales provide an invaluable primary resource for medievalists, anthropologists, psychologists, folklorists, and students of women's studies and Judaica. Critical introductions and explanatory headnotes contextualize the tales, and comprehensive endnotes and a bibliography allow readers to follow up analogue and subject studies in their own areas of interest. "This book makes available, for the first time, a large body of exempla demonizing the medieval 'other' and forming, thus, medieval vernacular society's mentality regarding the psychology of evil." -- Katharina M. Wilson, coeditor of Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage: Misogamous Literature From Juvenal to Chaucer

Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of... investing changed--and not changed--over the last five hundred years? Edward Chancellor examines the nature of speculation--from medieval Europe to the Tulip mania of the 1630s to today's Internet stock craze. A contributing writer to The Financial Times and The Economist, looks at both the psychological and economic forces that drive people to "bet" their money in markets; how markets are made, unmade, and manipulated; and who wins when speculation runs rampant. Drawing colorfully on the words of such speculators as Sir Isaac Newton, Daniel Defoe, Ivan Boesky, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Devil Take the Hindmost is part history, part social science, and purely illuminating: an erudite and hugely entertaining book that is more timely today than ever before.

This book is written for all companies, student and professional, who are interested in non-text-based theatre and shines a practical light on the... passionate business of the devising process. It includes suggestions and advice on getting started and developing trust and communication within the devising company; how to research and use the results to stimulate ideas and discussion in the rehearsal period; encouraging, channelling, and developing ideas in the rehearsal room; discovering and incorporating the unexpected in rehearsal; backstage and design work, with sample checklists; raising money and organizing budgets; and how to stop talking, start playing, and develop the performance for an audience.