AMIDST THE WRECKAGE OF FINANCIAL RUIN, PEOPLE ARE LEFT PUZZLING ABOUT HOW IT HAPPENED. WHERE DID ALL THE PROBLEMS BEGIN? For the answer, Jack Cashill, a journalist as shrewd as he is seasoned, looks past the headlines and deep into pages of history and comes back with the goods. From Plato to payday loans, from Aristotle to AIG, from Shakespeare to the Salomon Brothers, from the Medici to Bernie Madoff-in Popes and Bankers Jack Cashill unfurls a fascinating...

From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning....

"In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this... trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals...

There have been large magazines with tiny circulations and there have been diminutive sheets which have reached thousands of readers. But all 'little magazines' have been small in one or another of these ways, and usually in both... And yet most of them have had arrestingly large-scale ambitions...' From Ian Hamilton (1938-2001), himself the founder of the Review and New Review, comes this matchless survey (first published in 1976) of the literary...

Since the beginning in 1943, the mission of the Gamma Sigma Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority has been to cultivate scholastic and ethical standards, to promote unity and friendship among college women, and to be of service to all mankind. Timeless Service in Gamma Sigma Omega Chapter chronicles the history of the women who sojourned in the life of one chapter of the first Black female Greek letter organization and the events that impacted...

When travel journalist Sophie Campbell squeezed into heels and a hat to investigate the English social season, she got more than she bargained for. Why, she wondered, were events such as the Chelsea Flower Show, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, The Derby at Epsom, Royal Ascot, the Henley Royal Regatta, Wimbledon Fortnight and Glorious Goodwood so formal, so fashionable and so famous? Her hectic and sometimes hilarious journey through the English...

New York City's five boroughs have been home to more Italian immigrants than any other place in America. Over the last 140 years, scores of Italian neighborhoods have spanned Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, and the Bronx. These communities preserve their heritage by celebrating special events and feasts, such as Manhattan's 130-year-old Feast of St. Rocco, the Dance of the Giglio in East Harlem and Williamsburg, and saint processions for...

Witchcraft unravels the myth from the mystery, the facts from the legends, in this bewitching introduction to witchcraft's lesser-known history. Spanning several centuries and comprising unbelievable facts and little-known legends, meet all the witches of your imagination and learn why, where and how it all began. • Uncover the meanings of their rituals and rites, their lore, and their craft • Discover the significance of their sabbats and...

For over a century, Italy has had a love affair with the cigarette. Perhaps no consumer item better symbolizes the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of contemporary Italian history. Starting around 1900, the new and popular cigarette spread down the social hierarchy and eventually, during the 1960s, across the gender divide. For much of the century, cigarette consumption was an index of economic well-being and of modernism. Only...

Life in late Victorian and Edwardian England on a Birmingham farm—this is the story of the family who inhabited Pinfold Farm in Yardley, a now long-vanished agricultural holding except for the farmhouse itself, a Grade Two Listed Building now called Pinfold House.