In Anime’s Media Mix, Marc Steinberg convincingly shows that anime is far more than a style of Japanese animation. Beyond its immediate form of... cartooning, anime is also a unique mode of cultural production and consumption that led to the phenomenon that is today called “media mix” in Japan and “convergence” in the West.According to Steinberg, both anime and the media mix were ignited on January 1, 1963, when Astro Boy hit Japanese TV screens for the first time. Sponsored by a chocolate manufacturer with savvy marketing skills, Astro Boy quickly became a cultural icon in Japan. He was the poster boy (or, in his case, “sticker boy”) both for Meiji Seika’s chocolates and for what could happen when a goggle-eyed cartoon child fell into the eager clutches of creative marketers. It was only a short step, Steinberg makes clear, from Astro Boy to Pokémon and beyond.Steinberg traces the cultural genealogy that spawned Astro Boy to the transformations of Japanese media culture that followed—and forward to the even more profound developments in global capitalism supported by the circulation of characters like Doraemon, Hello Kitty, and Suzumiya Haruhi. He details how convergence was sparked by anime, with its astoundingly broad merchandising of images and its franchising across media and commodities. He also explains, for the first time, how the rise of anime cannot be understood properly—historically, economically, and culturally—without grasping the integral role that the media mix played from the start. Engaging with film, animation, and media studies, as well as analyses of consumer culture and theories of capitalism, Steinberg offers the first sustained study of the Japanese mode of convergence that informs global media practices to this day.

An Imperative Duty tells the story of Rhoda Aldgate, a young woman on the verge of marriage who has been raised by her aunt to assume that she is white,... but who is in fact the descendant of an African-American grandmother. The novel traces the struggles of Rhoda, her family, and her suitor to come to terms with the implications of Rhoda's heritage. Howells employs this stock situation to explore the newly urgent questions of identity, morality, and social policy raised by "miscegenation" in the post-Reconstruction United States. The novel imagines interracial marriage sympathetically at a time when racist sentiment was on the rise, and does this in one of Howells's most aesthetically economical performances in the short novel form. Appendices to this Broadview Edition include material on the "tragic mulatta" in literature, interracial marriage, the "science" of race in the nineteenth century, and Howells's literary realism.

A major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slaveryWhen George Washington wrote his will, he made the... startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil. Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true.George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

From one of the world’s greatest humanitarian activists comes a searing personal memoir that is also an urgent call to confront suffering in all its... many forms. Having seen things we hope never to see, confronted suffering, dispassion, and evil we hope never to encounter, James Orbinski still believes in “the good we can be if we so choose.” Recounting stories from his own experience, embodied in which are warnings, hope, and lessons in how we can inject humanitarian activity into our lives, An Imperfect Offering is invaluable reading for anyone who feels he or she can make a difference.

They are known as cundinas or tandas in Mexico, and for many people these local savings-and-loan operations play an indispensable role in the struggle... to succeed in today’s transborder economy. With this extensively researched book, Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez updates and expands upon his major 1983 study of rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs), incorporating new data that reflect the explosion of Mexican-origin populations in the United States. Much more than a study of one economic phenomenon though, the book examines the way in which these practices are part of greater transnational economies and how these populations engage in—and suffer through—the twenty-first century global economy. Central to the ROSCA is the cultural concept of mutual trust, or confianza. This is the cultural glue that holds the reciprocal relationship together. As Vélez-Ibáñez explains, confianza “shapes the expectations for relationships within broad networks of interpersonal links, in which intimacies, favors, goods, services, emotion, power, or information are exchanged.” In a border region where migration, class movement, economic changes, and institutional inaccessibility produce a great deal of uncertainty, Mexican-origin populations rely on confianza and ROSCAs to maintain a sense of security in daily life. How do transborder people adapt these common practices to meet the demands of a global economy? That is precisely what Vélez-Ibáñez investigates.

The penultimate ruler of the Inca dynasty narrated this first-hand account of the Spanish invasion of Peru to a Spanish missionary in 1570; available in... English for the first time. Takes a critical look at how the Incan society challenged the Spanish conquest.

An Inconvenient Truth--Gore's groundbreaking, battle cry of a follow-up to the bestselling Earth in the Balance--is being published to tie in with a... documentary film of the same name. Both the book and film were inspired by a series of multimedia presentations on global warming that Gore created and delivers to groups around the world. With this book, Gore, who is one of our environmental heroes--and a leading expert--brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world; photographs, charts, and other illustrations; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming. He presents, with alarming clarity and conclusiveness--and with humor, too--that the fact of global warming is not in question and that its consequences for the world we live in will be disastrous if left unchecked. This riveting new book--written in an accessible, entertaining style--will open the eyes of even the most skeptical.

A cycle of pathbreaking poems about the history of a family set against the backdrop of the last century.An Individual History describes the fears,... anger, and guilt—personal, familial, societal, political, and historical—that comprise a life. The figure of the speaker’s maternal grandmother who was institutionalized for five decades serves as an overriding metaphor for this haunting, bold new work by an essential American poet. from “An Individual History” This was before the time of lithium and Zoloft before mood stabilizers and anxiolytics and almost all the psychotropic drugs, but not before     thorazine, which the suicide O’Laughlin called “handcuffs for the    mind.” It was before, during, and after the time of atomic    fallout, Auschwitz, the Nakba, DDT, and you could take water    cures, find solace in quarantines, participate in shunnings, or stand at Lourdes among the canes and crutches.

An Infinity of Nations explores the formation and development of a Native New World in North America. Until the middle of the nineteenth century,... indigenous peoples controlled the vast majority of the continent while European colonies of the Atlantic World were largely confined to the eastern seaboard. To be sure, Native North America experienced far-reaching and radical change following contact with the peoples, things, and ideas that flowed inland following the creation of European colonies on North American soil. Most of the continent's indigenous peoples, however, were not conquered, assimilated, or even socially incorporated into the settlements and political regimes of this Atlantic New World. Instead, Native peoples forged a New World of their own. This history, the evolution of a distinctly Native New World, is a foundational story that remains largely untold in histories of early America.Through imaginative use of both Native language and European documents, historian Michael Witgen recreates the world of the indigenous peoples who ruled the western interior of North America. The Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples of the Great Lakes and Northern Great Plains dominated the politics and political economy of these interconnected regions, which were pivotal to the fur trade and the emergent world economy. Moving between cycles of alliance and competition, and between peace and violence, the Anishinaabeg and Dakota carved out a place for Native peoples in modern North America, ensuring not only that they would survive as independent and distinct Native peoples but also that they would be a part of the new community of nations who made the New World.

An inquiry into science education is an exploration into education in a context that is grounded and significant. It is written by a college professor... of Physics and Science Education who spent sabbatical year as a full time science teacher in a neighborhood high school in a poor area of New York City. His varied experiences highlight the contrast of what science education is and what it can be. The framework through which the book is written is that science education should be an active, purposeful process which promotes functional understanding and critical thinking. Science learners should be given the opportunity to build an understanding of benchmark principals of science based on their own observations and reasoning. In much the same way, this book explores benchmark principals of science education through real classroom experiences. Standard approaches of teaching and assessment are presented and alternative opportunities are described. Theories and strategies of science education emerge from analysis of classroom observations. Although the focus is on the teaching and learning of science, the subtext is implications of a failing educational system and what can be done about it. The primary intended audience is educators of all capacities, but particularly science teachers. An inquiry into science education integrates critical topics of science education in a contextualized, accessible, and easy to read narrative. The secondary intended audience is non-fiction readers. This book examines educational issues relevant to a general audience from the perspective of a scientist with a focus on inquiry and reasoning. Critical issues are addressed through case histories, some with touches of humor, but all with insight into children and learning.

A translation of Nishida's earliest book which represented the foundation of his philosophy - reflecting both his study of Zen Buddhism and his thorough... analysis of Western philosophy. The book provides an account of this 20th-century Japanese philosopher's ideas.