An exploration of Jewish history in the Lone Star State, from the Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition to contemporary Jewish communities. Texas has one of the largest Jewish populations in the South and West, comprising an often-overlooked vestige of the Diaspora. The Chosen Folks brings this rich aspect of the past to light, going beyond single biographies and photographic histories to explore the full evolution of the Jewish experience in Texas. Drawing...

"Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic, and her academic husband, Paul. Gaitskill illuminates their shifting relationships over several years, as well as Velvet's encounter with the horses at the stable down the road. Mare is the story of a girl and a horse, joined with a story of people from different races...

This work traces the evolution of the belief that Jerusalem is the center of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious worlds and argues that this fixation is a main cause of the modern-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It uncovers the ways in which the city became a transcendent fantasy that ignites religious fervor unlike anywhere else on Earth. The author shows how the conflicts within this holiest of cities underscore an important point of history:...

One of the most acclaimed and powerful novels of modern Turkey is set across Europe, but retains the Turkish-Kurdish conflict at its heart A mixture of thriller, love story, political, and psycho-philosophical novel, this is a sobering, coruscating introduction to the potentially explosive situation that exists between the Kurds and the Turkish state. A bestselling author suffering from writer's block witnesses the accidental shooting of a young Kurdish...

The wave of popular uprisings that swept across the Arab world starting in December 2010 rattled regimes from Morocco to Oman. However, Lebanon's sectarian system proved immune to the domestic and regional pressures unleashed by the Arab Spring. How can this be explained? How has the country's political elite dealt with challenges to the system? And, finally, what lessons can other Arab states draw from Lebanon's sectarian experience? This book...

Ungrateful, opportunistic, moochers, dangerous, incompatible with our values and our way of life... Every immigrant demographic has heard these descriptors at some point in their migration history. We, the Others takes a contemporary look at the xenophobia, ethno-nationalism, and fear of the "other" that leads to discrimination and the belief that immigration is a polluting force. Rooted in the author's personal family history as the second-generation...

A look into the state of Islam in Europe and the threat posed by excluding moderate Muslims in Western society. While American leaders wage war with extremists in the Middle East, they are ignoring a greater threat closer to home. In Breeding Bin Ladens, Zachary Shore asserts that the growing ambivalence of Europe's Muslims poses risks to national identities, international security, and the transatlantic alliance. Europe's failure to integrate...

"Honorable Mention for the 1997 Senior Book Award of the American Ethnological Society" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1996" Loring M. Danforth is Professor of Anthropology at Bates College. He is the author of The Death Rituals of Rural Greece and Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement, both available from Princeton University Press. Greeks and Macedonians are presently...

The different peoples making up Sudan have a long history of ethnic conflict. There has been civil war between the north and the south, as well as conflict among the various ethnic communities and nomadic groups living within these regions. Readers examine the civil unrest that has divided the country for decades, as well as the rebellion and massacres of the Darfur region. Factors contributing to the area's ongoing conflicts, including clashes over...