There may be no greater source of anxiety for Americans today than the question of what to eat and drink. Are eggs the perfect protein, or are they... cholesterol bombs? Is red wine good for my heart or bad for my liver? Will pesticides, additives, and processed foods kill me? Here with some very rare and very welcome advice is food historian Harvey Levenstein: Stop worrying! In "Fear of Food" Levenstein reveals the people and interests who have created and exploited these worries, causing an extraordinary number of Americans to allow fear to trump pleasure in dictating their food choices. He tells of the prominent scientists who first warned about deadly germs and poisons in foods and their successors who charged that processing foods robs them of life-giving vitamins and minerals. These include Nobel Prize-winner Eli Metchnikoff, who advised that yogurt would enable people to live to be 140, and Elmer McCollum, the "discoverer" of vitamins, who tailored his warnings about vitamin deficiencies to suit the food producers who funded him. Levenstein also highlights how large food companies have taken advantage of these concerns by marketing their products to combat the fear of the moment. Such examples include the co-opting of the "natural foods" movement, which grew out of the belief that inhabitants of a remote Himalayan Shangri-la enjoyed remarkable health by avoiding the very kinds of processed food these corporations produced, and the physiologist Ancel Keys, originator of the Mediterranean Diet, who provided the basis for a powerful coalition of scientists, doctors, food producers, and others to convince Americans that high-fat foods were deadly. In "Fear of Food", Levenstein offers a much-needed voice of reason; he expertly questions these stories of constantly changing advice to reveal that there are no hard-and-fast facts when it comes to eating. With this book, he hopes to free us from the fears that cloud so many of our food choices and allow us to finally rediscover the joys of eating something just because it tastes good.

For two centuries, federal judges exercised wide discretion in criminal sentencing. This changed in 1987, when a hopelessly complex bureaucratic... apparatus was imposed on the federal courts. Though termed Sentencing "Guidelines," the new sentencing rules are mandatory. Reformers hoped that the Sentencing Guidelines would address inequities in sentencing. The Guidelines have failed to achieve this goal, according to Kate Stith and José Cabranes, and they have sacrificed comprehensibility and common sense.Fear of Judging is the first full-scale history, analysis, and critique of the new sentencing regime. The authors show that the present system has burdened the courts, dehumanized the sentencing process, and, by repressing judicial discretion, eroded the constitutional balance of powers. Eschewing ideological or politically oriented critiques of the Guidelines and offering alternatives to the current system, Stith and Cabranes defend a vision of justice that requires judges to perform what has traditionally been considered their central task—exercising judgment.

The idea that science is just one more way of knowing the world and that there are other, radically different, yet equally valid ways, has taken deep... root in academia. In Fear of Knowledge, Paul Boghossian tears these relativist theories of knowledge to shreds. He argues forcefully for the intuitive, common-sense view--that the world exists independent of human opinion and that there is a way to arrive at beliefs about the world that are objectively reasonable to anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence, regardless of their social or cultural perspective. This short, lucid, witty book shows that philosophy provides rock-solid support for common sense against the relativists; it is provocative reading throughout the discipline and beyond.

The period since 1989 has been marked by the global endorsement of open markets, the free flow of finance capital and liberal ideas of constitutional... rule, and the active expansion of human rights. Why, then, in this era of intense globalization, has there been a proliferation of violence, of ethnic cleansing on the one hand and extreme forms of political violence against civilian populations on the other?Fear of Small Numbers is Arjun Appadurai’s answer to that question. A leading theorist of globalization, Appadurai turns his attention to the complex dynamics fueling large-scale, culturally motivated violence, from the genocides that racked Eastern Europe, Rwanda, and India in the early 1990s to the contemporary “war on terror.” Providing a conceptually innovative framework for understanding sources of global violence, he describes how the nation-state has grown ambivalent about minorities at the same time that minorities, because of global communication technologies and migration flows, increasingly see themselves as parts of powerful global majorities. By exacerbating the inequalities produced by globalization, the volatile, slippery relationship between majorities and minorities foments the desire to eradicate cultural difference.Appadurai analyzes the darker side of globalization: suicide bombings; anti-Americanism; the surplus of rage manifest in televised beheadings; the clash of global ideologies; and the difficulties that flexible, cellular organizations such as Al-Qaeda present to centralized, “vertebrate” structures such as national governments. Powerful, provocative, and timely, Fear of Small Numbers is a thoughtful invitation to rethink what violence is in an age of globalization.

Gavin was unlike other boys. He did not fight, he threw like a girl, he could not swim, he had no happy memories. His mother had died giving birth, his... father had dropped the baby at the graveside. Gavin was raised by an abusive grandmother who beat him every day in twisted revenge. This haunting collection of stories is peopled mainly by rejects of society, sad and lonely souls trying to come to terms with, to survive in, antagonistic circumstances. Some of the protagonists are gay in the hypocritically macho world of Caribbean men. Some are women scarred by childhood rape. There are the mentally ill, the mentally challenged. There is obeah, superstition and communion with the dead. But love blooms in the most unexpected places, and amongst the misfits there are fighters such as Naomi, a Rastafarian acolyte abandoned with six children. And for all the hardship there is laughter, as in Augustus Silvera's triumphant last letter to the editor, and in the gospel according to Sue, who repaired her virginity every Sunday morning and so became immaculately pregnant.

In this friendly introductory guide, food and wine writer Leslie Brenner tells how to: Pour and taste wine Develop a taste memory Order from a wine... list Select a wine at the store Match food with wineIn addition, helpful sidebars illuminate such subjects as: How--and why--to swirl without sloshing Disarming a snotty waiter Ten great wines to bring to a dinner party Going beyond California Chardonnay Starting your own cellar for under $100Along the way, Lettie Teague's funny and informative cartoons enhance the text and make great devices for remembering the most important facts. Before long,your old standby, Chateau Screwtop, will be a distant memory. Accessible and concise, Fear of Wine will appeal to anyone who wants to know a little bit about a subject that can bring great pleasure. At last, a guide that is as fun to read as wine is to drink!

A step-by-step process to enable an assessment team to determine the feasibility of a building project and prepare a written report to support its... findings. Includes a CD-ROM with sample Excel spreadsheets.

In this provocative work, Cheryl Claassen challenges long-standing notions n this provocative work, Cheryl Claassen challenges long-standing notions... Iabout hunter-gatherer life in the southern Ohio Valley as it unfolded some Iabout hunter-gatherer life in the southern Ohio Valley as it unfolded some I8,000 to 3,500 years ago. Focusing on freshwater shell mounds scattered 8,000 to 3,500 years ago. Focusing on freshwater shell mounds scattered along the Tennessee, Ohio, Green, and Harpeth rivers, Claassen draws on the latest archaeological research to offer penetrating new insights into the sacred world of Archaic peoples. Some of the most striking ideas are that there were no villages in the southern Ohio Valley during the Archaic period, that all of the trading and killing were for ritual purposes, and that body positioning in graves reflects cause of death primarily. Mid-twentieth-century assessments of the shell mounds saw them as the products of culturally simple societies that cared little about their dead and were concerned only with food. More recent interpretations, while attributing greater complexity to these peoples, have viewed the sites as mere villages and stressed such factors as population growth and climate change in analyzing the way these societies and their practices evolved. Claassen, however, makes a persuasive case that the sites were actually the settings for sacred rituals of burial and renewal and that their large shell accumulations are evidence of feasts associated with those ceremonies. She argues that the physical evidence—including the location of the sites, the largely undisturbed nature of the deposits, the high incidence of dog burials, the number of tools per body found at the sites, and the indications of human sacrifice and violent death—not only supports this view but reveals how ritual practices developed over time. The seemingly sudden demise of shellfish consumption, Claassen contends, was not due to overharvesting and environmental change; it ended, rather, because the sacred rituals changed. Feasting with Shellfish in the Southern Ohio Valley is a work bound to stir controversy and debate among scholars of the Archaic period. Just as surely, it will encourage a new appreciation for the spiritual life of ancient peoples—how they thought about the cosmos and the mysterious forces that surrounded them.  

In 1888 a handful of German adventurers bungled an attempt to conquer the Muslim towns of the East African coast. They were expelled almost immediately,... but their intrusion sparked a political crisis that led to the collapse of all civil authority in the Swahili towns. Feasts and Riot traces the background to that crisis, using the events of 1888 as a window through which to examine the nature of class conflict and popular consciousness in precolonial Africa. Glassman shows how the contours of market penetration were shaped by local patterns of struggle, particularly struggle over the definition of community institutions. Deriving his approach from the writings of Gramsci, the author focuses on the ambiguity of popular rebellion. Lower class rebels were motivated neither by a distinct, class-based vision of society, nor by dedication to any "traditional" way of life. Instead, they expressed a rebellious interpretation of community ideals, ideals that they held in common with their social superiors.

The family dinner, the client luncheon, the holiday spread--the idea of people coming together for a meal seems the most natural thing in the world. But... that is certainly not the case for most other members of the animal kingdom. In Feast, archeologist Martin Jones presents both historic and modern scientific evidence to illuminate how prehistoric humans first came to share food and to trace the ways in which the human meal has shaped our cultural evolution. Jones shows that by studying the activities of our closest animal relative, the chimpanzee, and by unearthing ancient hearths, some more than 30,000 years old, scientists have been able to piece together a picture of how our ancient ancestors found, killed, cooked, and divided food. In sites uncovered all over the world, fragments of bone, remnants of charred food, pieces of stone or clay serving vessels, and the outlines of ancient halls tell the story of how we slowly developed the complex traditions of eating we recognize in our own societies today. Jones takes us on a tour of the most fascinating sites and artifacts that have been discovered, and shows us how archeologists have made many fascinating discoveries. In addition, he traces the rise of such recent phenomena as biscuits, "going out to eat," and the Thanksgiving-themed TV dinner. From the earliest evidence of human consumption around half a million years ago to the era of the drive-through diner, this fascinating account unfolds the history of the human meal and its profound impact on human society.

Consider the unique features of Feature and Magazine Writing: Action, Angle and Anecdotes. Its authors have taught magazine writing at universities for... a combined 30 years and have earned success and acclaim for magazine writing and editing. Its comprehensive chapters cover the most complete range of topics ever included in a magazine and feature writing text. Its affordability makes it immediately applicable to the hundreds of journalism programs teaching “magazine writing,” “feature writing” or similar courses. Authors Sumner and Miller have written a text that genuinely models its message through lively writing, touches of humor and a conversational tone. Coverage includes content too often missing or deficient in existing texts: finding original ideas; developing strong angles; writing for targeted, niche audiences; practical how-to instruction on the many different types of magazine articles; fresh perspective and advice from professional writers and editors; examples, exercises and sample, illustrative articles; glossaries of publishing terms in each chapter; how to find the best Web sites and databases for background research; and how to locate expert sources who are accessible for telephone interviews. Tightly edited, colorfully written, concise, and moderately priced, Feature and Magazine Writing is the textbook of choice for your future feature writers.

This fully revised and updated edition of Feature and Magazine Writing covers everything from finding original ideas to locating expert sources. With... fresh perspectives and advice from professional writers and editors, this colorfully-written introduction is required reading for anyone who wishes to become a strong feature writer. Includes chapters on connecting content to the calendar, writing for online publications, trends, issues and controversies, and writing dramatic storiesNew chapters in this edition include 'How To Find A Magazine Job', 'Last Chance: The Final Draft', and 'Writing for Trades, Associations and Organizations'New sections in this edition include 'Improving Your Pizzazz and 'Original Research = Original Articles'