***WINNER, 2008 PEN Oakland - Josephine Miles National Literary Award Blacks have been vanishing from college campuses in the United States and... reappearing in prisons, videos, and movies. Cecil Brown tackles this unwitting "disappearing act" head on, paying special attention to the situation at UC Berkeley and the University of California system generally. Brown contends that educators have ignored the importance of the oral tradition in African American upbringing, an oversight mirrored by the media. When these students take exams, their abilities are not tested. Further, university officials, administrators, professors, and students are ignoring the phenomenon of the disappearing black student – in both their admissions and hiring policies. With black studies departments shifting the focus from African American and black community interests to black immigrant issues, says Brown, the situation is becoming dire. Dude, Where’s My Black Studies Department? offers both a scorching critique and a plan for rethinking and reform of a crucial but largely unacknowledged problem in contemporary society.

High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen... months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.

High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen... months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.

The idea that small loans can help poor families build businesses and exit poverty has blossomed into a global movement. The concept has captured the... public imagination, drawn in billions of dollars, reached millions of customers, and garnered a Nobel Prize. Radical in its suggestion that the poor are creditworthy and conservative in its insistence on individual accountability, the idea has expanded beyond credit into savings, insurance, and money transfers, earning the name microfinance. But is it the boon so many think it is?Readers of David Roodman's openbook blog will immediately recognize his thorough, straightforward, and trenchant analysis. Due Diligence, written entirely in public with input from readers, probes the truth about microfinance to guide governments, foundations, investors, and private citizens who support financial services for poor people. In particular, it explains the need to deemphasize microcredit in favor of other financial services for the poor.

Companies of all sizes have been initiating international transactions--mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic alliances, and private... placements--in record numbers. Targeted due diligence is crucial to effectively research, value, and complete these complex deals. With an evolving climate of uncertainty and new, unpredictable threats to business, it is more essential than ever before.Due Diligence for Global Deal Making is an invaluable guidebook for companies trying to capitalize on the opportunities in both developed and emerging cross-border markets. All too often global transactions fail to meet the parties' expectations, and the leading culprit is inadequate due diligence. Especially when the target partner lacks a financial performance track record and significant assets, expanding businesses must answer difficult questions, such as: Why (if at all) do this deal? What are the rules going in, and what happens if things go wrong? Where are the tax, legal, financial, and operational traps, and what are the opportunities? This book provides what’s needed to avoid devastating mistakes and to master the steps that ensure success:Expert analysis, insights, and strategies from experienced practitioners and leading authorities in cross-border mattersIn-depth coverage of critical topics decision makers need to understand in order to succeed in cross-border transactions--from corporate planning to operational, financial, legal, tax, accounting, and people/organizational considerationsBest practices of corporate investors and professional advisers in conducting critical due diligenceNoted experts discuss critical topics corporate executives--and all those involved with their company's legal, operational, accounting, and tax matters--need to know to successfully complete complex global transactions today.

One was called "a tin can on a shingle"; the other, "a half-submerged crocodile." Yet, on a March day in 1862 in Hampton Roads, Virginia, after a... five-hour duel, the U.S.S. Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia (formerly the U.S.S. Merrimack) were to change the course of not only the Civil War but also naval warfare forever. Using letters, diaries, and memoirs of men who lived through the epic battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack and of those who witnessed it from afar, William C. Davis documents and analyzes this famous confrontation of the first two modern warships. The result is a full-scale history that is as exciting as a novel. Besides a thorough discussion of the designs of each ship, Davis portrays come of the men involved in the building and operation of America's first ironclads-John Ericsson, supreme egoist and engineering genius who designed the Monitor; John Brooke, designer of the Virginia; John Worden, the well-loved captain of the Monitor; Captain Franklin Buchanan of the Virginia; and a host of other men on both Union and Confederate sides whose contributions make this history as much a story of men as of ships and war. William C. Davis is the editor of Civil War Times Illustrated and the author of Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol ; The Battle of New Market; Battle at Bull Run; and The Orphan Brigade.

Every poem is the story of itself.Pure conflict. Its own undoing.Breeze of dreams, then certain death.                      --from... "History"Duende, that dark and elusive force described by Federico García Lorca, is the creative and ecstatic power an artist seeks to channel from within. It can lead the artist toward revelation, but it must also, Lorca says, accept and even serenade the possibility of death. Tracy K. Smith's bold second poetry collection explores history and the intersections of folk traditions, political resistance, and personal survival. Duende gives passionate testament to suppressed cultures, and allows them to sing.

En el contexto de una Nueva España que apenas despierta a su vida de conquistada, y que se apresta a comenzar de lleno la nueva aventura del mestizaje,... Carmen Boullosa borda con manos de experta una ficción que tiene mucho de verdad y otro tanto de imposible. En Duerme presenta el intrincado personaje de Claire, una mujer del "Viejo mundo" que gusta de vestir como hombre y vivir en tesitura masculina, en la orilla del riesgo, viajera en tierras recién conocidas por Europa. Mientras los españoles construyen piedra sobre piedra la cristiandad donde antes se erguían templos majestuosos, sobre las espaldas y a costa de los indios, Claire se desembaraza, a veces a su pesar de diversas identidades cuando las situaciones se vuelven más apremiantes. Carmen Boullosa recrea con un despliegue de recursos el mundo colonial, en el que se funden la realidad hispana y las creencias mágicas indígenas, y nos presenta una novela de aventuras, ampliamente documentada en sucesos históricos.

These three unique volumes contain 47 duets in their original form written by composers who lived in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The primo and... secondo parts are written on facing pages and are of equal difficulty, allowing students of equal ability to perform together. These duets can be used as supplementary material for any course of study.

Dr. Hannah Green--heroine of Praetzellis's textbook-as-novel Death by Theory--has really gotten herself into trouble this time. The spunky archaeologist... has been asked to manage the contract archaeology project at a historic site in New Zealand when the regular archaeological staff of University of Invercargill abruptly dies off. On the scene, Hannah discovers she needs to teach her team about research design, survey methods, archival research, professional ethics, curation, and especially field safety, if they are to complete the contract before young Mr. Wallace levels the site in favor of a golf course. With a cast of characters that includes Missy-Jojo-the-Dog-Faced-Girl as lab supervisor, erotic romance writer and field volunteer Elena Solara, the ghost of socialite Bunny Wallace, and shovelbum Rusty Spittle, Praetzellis' brief textbook-as-novel introduces students to the hows and whys of field methodology in an entertaining but informative way. Ideal for your introductory archaeology classes and probably the only textbook you'll enjoy reading yourself.

Hans Jonas here rethinks the foundations of ethics in light of the awesome transformations wrought by modern technology: the threat of nuclear war,... ecological ravage, genetic engineering, and the like. Though informed by a deep reverence for human life, Jonas's ethics is grounded not in religion but in metaphysics, in a secular doctrine that makes explicit man's duties toward himself, his posterity, and the environment. Jonas offers an assessment of practical goals under present circumstances, ending with a critique of modern utopianism.

One of the literary masterpieces of the century, this translation is now presented with facing-page German.We have a marvelous, almost legendary, image... of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. Rilke was staying at a castle (Duino) on the sea near Trieste. One morning he walked out on the battlements and climbed down to where the rocks dropped sharply to the sea. From out of the wind, which was blowing with great force, Rilke seemed to hear a voice: Wer, wenn ich schriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (If I cried out, who would hear me up there, among the angelic orders?). He wrote these words, the opening of the first Duino Elegy, in his notebook, then went inside to continue what was to be his major work and one of the literary masterpieces of the century.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelicorders? and even if one of them pressed mesuddenly to his heart: I'd be consumedin that overwhelming... existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdainsto destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.-from "The First Elegy"Over the last fifteen years, in his two volumes of New Poems as well as in The Book of Images and Uncollected Poems, Edward Snow has emerged as one of Rainer Maria Rilke's most able English-language interpreters. In his translations, Snow adheres faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English. Written in a period of spiritual crisis between 1912 and 1922, the poems that compose the Duino Elegies are the ones most frequently identified with the Rilkean sensibility. With their symbolic landscapes, prophetic proclamations, and unsettling intensity, these complex and haunting poems rank among the outstanding visionary works of the century.