2043 A.D.: The Ngumi War rages. A burned-out soldier and his scientist lover discover a secret that could put the universe back to square one. And it... is not terrifying. It is tempting...

In 1978, a Maya community queen stood on a stage to protest a massacre of indigenous campesinos at the hands of the Guatemalan state he spoke... graphically to the dead and to the living alike: 'Brothers of Panzos, your blood is in our throats!' Given the context, her message might come as a surprise. A revolutionary insurgency in the late 1970s was being met by brutal state efforts to defeat it, efforts directed not only at the guerrilla armies but also at reform movements of all kinds. Yet the young woman was just one of many Mayas across the highlands voicing demands for change. Over the course of the 1970s, Mayas argued for economic, cultural, and political justice for the indigenous 'pueblo'. Many became radicalized by state violence against Maya communities that soon reached the level of genocide. Scholars have disagreed about Maya participation in Guatemala's civil war, and the development of oppositional activism by Mayas during the war is poorly understood. Betsy Konefal explores this history in detail, examining the roots and diversity of Maya organizing and its place in the unfolding conflict. She traces debates about ethnicity, class, and revolution, and examines how (some) Mayas became involved in opposition to a repressive state. She looks closely at the development of connections between cultural events like queen pageants and more radical demands for change, and follows the uneasy relationships that developed between Maya revolutionaries and their Ladino counterparts. Konefal makes it clear that activist Mayas were not bystanders in the transformations that preceded and accompanied Guatemala's civil war - activism by Mayas helped shape the war, and the war shaped Maya activism.

Since it first appeared on the 1974 album Planet Waves, "Forever Young" has been one of Bob Dylan's most beloved songs. Now award-winning artist Paul... Rogers gives us a new interpretation of the lyrics. With images inspired by classic Dylan songs and pieces of his life, this is a bold and touching tribute to an anthem whose message will always stay forever young.

In For Every Sin, Aharon Appelfeld, recounts the moving and unforgettable story of Theo, a young Holocaust survivor struggling to come to terms with his... experience. A student when he was first imprisoned, Theo is a young man who has lost his family and friends and wants nothing more than to return to his home. In a desperate attempt to escape the pain of the camps, he sets out to walk across Europe, determined to remain alone until he has regained his strength. In the nightmarish world he enters, haunted by images from his past and continually reunited with fellow survivors, he is forced to come face to face with his own demons and the human condition from which he cannot escape.

The youngest of twenty children of sharecroppers in rural Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer witnessed throughout her childhood the white cruelty, political... exclusion, and relentless economic exploitation that defined black existence in the Delta. In this intimate biography, Chana Kai Lee documents Hamer's lifelong crusade to empower the poor through collective action, her rise to national prominence as a civil rights activist, and the personal costs of her ongoing struggle to win a political voice and economic self-sufficiency for blacks in the segregated South. Lee traces Hamer's early work as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in rural Mississippi, documenting the partial blindness she suffered after being arrested and beaten by local officials for leading a group of blacks to register for the vote. Hamer's dramatic appearance at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, where she led a group from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in a bid to unseat the all-white Mississippi delegation, brought both Hamer and the virtual powerlessness of black Mississippians to the nation's attention; but the convention also marked her first debilitating encounter with the middle class of the national civil rights movement. Despite her national visibility, Hamer remained a militant grassroots leader who never stopped working for the betterment of her own community in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Among many local initiatives, she established the Freedom Farm Corporation, a revolutionary cooperative venture aimed at facilitating economic self- sufficiency for the rural poor. Lee renders Hamer's acute political instincts, her rhetorical prowess, and her skill in retooling her past to serve strategic political purposes, as well as her deep frustration with a society that was willing to hold her up as an example of individual heroism but resisted her efforts at collective transformation. Offering a complex understanding of how racism, sexism, violence, and economic injustice intersected to spur the civil rights movement and to shape, and sometimes restrict, the role of women and poor people within it, Lee illuminates the abiding links between political activism and economic transformation. The definitive biography of one of the most important civil rights activists of the twentieth century, "For Freedom's Sake" documents Fannie Lou Hamer's lifelong crusade to empower the poor through collective action, her rise to national prominence as a civil rights activist, and the personal costs of her ongoing struggle to win a political voice and economic self-sufficiency for blacks in the segregated South.

When Gerald was a child he was fascinated by fire. But fire is dangerous and powerful, and tragedy strikes. His substance-addicted mother is taken from... him. Then he loses the loving generosity of a favorite aunt. A brutal stepfather with a flaming temper and an evil secret makes his life miserable. The one bright light in Gerald's life is his little half sister, Angel, whom he struggles to protect from her father, Jordan Sparks, who abuses her, and from their mother, whose irresponsible behavior forces Gerald to work hard to keep the family together. As a teenager, Gerald finds success as a member of the Hazelwood Tigers basketball team, while Angel develops her talents as a dancer. Trouble still haunts them, however, and Gerald learns, painfully, that young friends can die and old enemies must be faced. In the end he must stand up to his stepfather alone in a blazing confrontation. Sharon M. Draper has interwoven characters and events from her previous novel, Tears of a Tiger, in this unflinchingly realistic portrayal of poverty and child abuse. It is an inspiring story of a young man who rises above the tragic circumstances of his life by drawing on the love and strength of family and friends.

The definitive work on one of the least explored aspects of Civil War history--the 180,000 enlisted African-Americans who fought for the Union. "One of... the most revealing contributions to the literature of the Civil War . . . fascinating."--New York Times.

Cedric J. Robinson offers a new understanding of race in America through his analysis of theater and film of the early twentieth century. He argues that... economic, political, and cultural forces present in the eras of silent film and the early "talkies" firmly entrenched limited representations of African Americans. Robinson's analysis marks a new way of approaching the intellectual, political, and media racism present in the beginnings of American narrative cinema.

Thomas Railles, an American expatriate and former “odd-jobber” for the CIA, is a successful painter living with his beloved wife, Florette, in a... small village in the Pyrenees. On an ordinary autumn day, Florette goes for a walk in the hills and is killed by unknown assailants. Was her death simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was it somehow connected to Thomas’s work with the CIA? When French officials detain four Moroccan terrorists and charge them with Florette’s murder, Thomas is invited by his boyhood friend (and former agency handler) Bernhard to witness the interrogation. Thomas's search for answers in this shadow world will lead him to a confrontation that will change him forever.

The first part of Forgetfulness is a fictional monograph on the life of the Austrian modernist composer Anton von Webern (1883-1945).The collage-work... monograph unfolds in a Webernian sequence of events and silences combining quotes from Webern, his friends and associates, and various historical and literary figures with short scenes, monologues, dialogues, newspaper articles, and theater and film scripts. The result is a lyrical panorama of early twentieth century Vienna. The second part of the book takes place in Vienna on May 1st, 1986, shortly before the election of Kurt Waldheim as President of the Austrian Republic and shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. The three simultaneous, intertwining monologues of an archivist, a retired opera singer, and the author of the monograph, revisit the themes and events of the first part, commenting on postwar conceptions, analyses, and revisions of the period during which Webern lived, while continuously haunted by the specters of Waldheim and Chernobyl, the persistence of crimes that are immanent, unpaid for, or only dimly, disingenuously recalled.