Books

Jeffrey E. Cohen presents a detailed, quantitative study of the characteristics of presidential cabinets from the days of George Washington through the first Reagan administration.

How close to reality was the official U.S. image of Libya through the Nixon-Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations? ElWahrfally concludes that it was very far from accurate. Using personal interviews as well as scholarly research, ElWarfally demonstrates that U.S. relations with Libya, regardless of rhetoric, have been primarily determined by whether or not Libya serves U.S. interests in the region: maintaining access to Middle Eastern oil, protecting Israel, and limiting Soviet expansionism.

This classic book is a practical and philosophical exploration of dance improvisation, providing hundreds of ideas.

One of the major voices in Latin American poetry confronts the political realities of contemporary Central America. The poems are richly human documents rooted in Alegria’s knowledge of and love for her subjects.

“The work would be of great value to philosophers engaged in the conceptual analysis of coercion, to political scientists studying the state or other coercive institutions, and to advanced readers interested in the field of peace research.”—Choice

The speaker in Irene McKinney’s poems is most often alone, sitting at the side of a stream, or standing at her own chosen gravesite in the Appalachian mountains, and the meditations spoken out of this essential solitude are powerfully clear, witty, and wide-ranging in content and tone. The center sequence of poems in the Emily Dickinson persona explores and magnifies that great and enigmatic figure. The poems are firmly grounded in concern for the ways in which the elemental powers are at work in the earth and in us: on the surface of our lives, and deeper in the underworld of the coalmines. In McKinney’s poems, the human world is never seen as separate from the natural one.

During the 1970s, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States witnessed unprecedented inflation, unemployment, and sluggish growth. This book examines government changes in economic policymaking and the public’s response to such changes, and sheds light on the political economy of three of the world’s oldest democracies.

The variety of subjects in Green Age is characteristic of Alicia Suskin Ostriker’s writing: from the opening poem, “Fifty,” funny, courageous, and defiant, to a set of birthday poems for a grown daughter; from emulations of the Persian mystic Rumi, to the provactive “Meditation in Seven Days,” whose central assumption is that we may find in the Bible traces of a Canaanite goddess whose worship was forbidden with the advent of patriarchal monotheism.

This definitive biography of Ida Tarbell, one of America’s great journalists, is highly readably and widely acclaimed.

Based on census data, Soltow presents an exhautive survey of wealth distribution in the early United States, with a particular focus on the 1798 census for the First Direct Tax.

What are the forces that cause us to strike out and harm each other? Captivity explores the way in which the individual is held hostage by society; how the forces of racism, sexism, and classism frequently express themselves as violence within the family. The book also explores a deeper captivity, like the Jews in Egypt yearning for the Promised Land, the soul trapped in exile from God.

Examines the 1985 confrontation between police and members of the black counterculture group MOVE, which ended in the destruction of sixty-one homes and the death of eleven residents—five of them children. Sheds light on relevant issues such as negotiating with “irrational” adversaries and problems of perception and misperception when different cultures clash.

Celebratory or eligiac, these poems record the author’s “two-headed journey” to root herself – geographically and emotionally – in the world. Becker’s poems are from remote and familiar outposts: the watery evanescence of Venice contrasts with the desert of the American Southwest; we lean with her over the rim of a canyon or stand back to study a Giacometti sculpture. From such settings arise poems on the death of a sibling, the consoling power of painting and sculpture; others celebrate the erotic and the capacity of the female body for pleasure and pain.

The definitive political biography of Swedish prime minister Tage Erlander. This book is both the study of an individual style of leadership and the role of the prime minister in a parliamentary state. It shows Erlander as a complex and engaging intellectual fiercely loyal to his party, agitative yet dedicated to cooperation between parties.

Mike Sajna, outdoors columnist for Pittsburgh Magazine, explores the controversial subject of deer hunting. Taking the reader to a camp site in Warren County, he recounts the traditions, lore, and physical testing that make the hunting of white-tailed deer a unique experience.