Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons--as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta's small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia--a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo--to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family--past and present--is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family--especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother's cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance?

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Xiaobing Li - Voices from the Vietnam War, Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans (2010).jpg

The Vietnam War's influence on politics, foreign policy, and subsequent military campaigns is the center of much debate and analysis. But the impact on veterans across the globe, as well as the war's effects on individual lives and communities, is a largely neglected issue. As a consequence of cultural and legal barriers, the oral histories of the Vietnam War currently available in English are predictably one-sided, providing limited insight into the inner workings of the Communist nations that participated in the war. Furthermore, many of these accounts focus on combat experiences rather than the backgrounds, belief systems, and social experiences of interviewees, resulting in an incomplete historiography of the war.Chinese native Xiaobing Li corrects this oversight in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans. Li spent seven years gathering hundreds of personal accounts from survivors of the war, accounts that span continents, nationalities, and political affiliations. The twenty-two intimate stories in the book feature the experiences of American, Chinese, Russian, Korean, and North and South Vietnamese veterans, representing the views of both anti-Communist and Communist participants, including Chinese officers of the PLA, a Russian missile-training instructor, and a KGB spy. These narratives humanize and contextualize the war's events while shedding light on aspects of the war previously unknown to Western scholars. Providing fresh perspectives on a long-discussed topic, Voices from the Vietnam War offers a thorough and unique understanding of America's longest war.

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Liz Walker - EcoVillage at Ithaca, Pioneering a Su stainable Culture (20065).jpg

In a world filled with stories of environmental devastation and social dysfunction, EcoVillage at Ithaca is a refreshing and hopeful look at a modern-day village that is taking an integrated approach to addressing these problems.
This book tells the story of life at EcoVillage at Ithaca, an internationally recognized example of sustainable development. It transports the reader into the midst of a vibrant community that includes co-housing neighborhoods, small-scale organic farming, land preservation, green building, energy alternatives and hands-on education. By integrating proven social and environmental alternatives into a living model, EcoVillage at Ithaca provides a rare glimpse into one possible—and positive—future for the planet.
EcoVillage at Ithaca delves into the heart of the lived experience at this innovative community. It provides a warm, personal and reflective look at what it is like to create a sustainable culture. The book tells in-depth stories about an integrated way of life:

Running a family farm
Creating “invented celebrations”
The poignancy of a home birth, as well as a conscious death
Community work parties
Dramatic examples of personal transformation

At the same time, as one chapter states, “This is not Utopia,” and the struggles and conflicts inherent in any community endeavor are not glossed over.
Human scale, accessible and inspiring, the example of EcoVillage at Ithaca will help readers imagine fresh alternatives to “life as usual.” It will appeal to all who are hungry to learn about successful working models of a more sustainable approach to living with each other and the earth.

Liz Walker co-founded and has directed EcoVillage at Ithaca since its inception in 1991 and has lived there with her family since the first buildings were completed. She has worked on all aspects of the community’s development and has written and lectured widely on the topic.

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Liz Walker - EcoVillage at Ithaca, Pioneering a Su stainable Culture (20065).pdf

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Manuel De Landa - War in the Age of Intelligent Ma chines (1991).jpg

In the aftermath of the methodical destruction of Iraq during the Persian Gulf War, the power and efficiency of new computerized weapons and surveillance technology have become chillingly apparent. For Manuel DeLanda, however, this new weaponry has a significance that goes far beyond military applications; he shows how it represents a profound historical shift in the relation of human beings both to machines and to information. The recent emergence of intelligent and autonomous bombs and missiles equipped with artificial perception and decision-making capabilities is, for Delanda, part of a much larger transfer of cognitive structures from humans to machines in the late twentieth century. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines provides a rich panorama of these astonishing developments; it details the mutating history of information analysis and machinic organization from the mobile siege artillery of the Renaissance, the clockwork armies of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic campaigns, and the Nazi blitzkrieg up to present-day cybernetic battle-management systems and satellite reconnaissance networks. Much more than a history of warfare, DeLanda's account is an unprecedented philosophical and historical reflection on the changing forms through which human bodies and materials are combined, organized, deployed, and made effective. Manuel DeLanda has published essays on philosophy and film theory. He is a computer programmer and a film artist.

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Manuel De Landa - War in the Age of Intelligent Ma chines (1991).pdf

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Guy L. Clifton - Flatlined, Resuscitating American Medicine (2009).jpg

In this insider's polemic, neurosurgeon and clinical investigator Clifton warns that the U.S. health-care system is dying on the table, the victim of an insurance system using unnecessary, high-tech medical procedures and diagnostic tests to generate more fees, and a pharmaceutical industry pushing two-dollar prescription pills where a 24-cent Aleve would do. Clifton estimates that 30 percent of all delivered health care services (about $700 billion a year) qualify as unnecessary treatment; the results are skyrocketing costs, growing ranks of the uninsured crowding the nation's emergency rooms, and an underserved, often in-the-dark patient class. On the basis of his 30-year career as a neurosurgeon and administrator, with a two-year stint in Sen. Orin Hatch's office, Clifton advocates an independent agency, financed by congress, that would work with doctors and hospital administrators to set standards for treatment and fees, aiming for no less than a "high-performance U.S. healthcare system... providing quality care at lower cost to all its citizens." An eye-opening, sausage-maker's perspective on contemporary medicine, Clifton's thorough text deserves the attention of policy makers, health professionals, and anyone regularly shuffled (or shoved) through the maze of U.S. health care.

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Guy L. Clifton - Flatlined, Resuscitating American Medicine (2009).pdf

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Yonatan Eyal - The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828-1861 (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - Yonatan Eyal - The Young America Movement and the Tran...ransformation of the Democratic Party, 1828-1861 2007.jpg

This book investigates a particular group, called Young America, within the U.S. Democratic Party during the 1840s and 1850s. It argues that members of this group changed what it meant to be a Democrat. They moved the party toward new economic thinking, greater engagement with the world, a more active reform attitude, and a new view of the U.S. Constitution, thus playing a role in the coming of the American Civil War. This is the first full-blown examination of Young America's impact in the realm of politics, as opposed to merely literature and culture.

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Yonatan Eyal - The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828-1861 (2007) [PDF].rar

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Maija Jansson - Realities of Representation, State Building in Early Modern Europe and European Amer ica (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - Maija Jansson - Realities of Representation, State Bui...ding in Early Modern Europe and European America 2007.jpg

This books examines the idea of representation and the institutional realities that shaped it in early modern Europe and European America. Contributors demonstrate how a country's history, society, and national experience dictate how representation is realized in political institutions, including Cortes, diets, parlements, parliaments, riksdags and reichstags. During the 16th and 17th centuries these assemblies were dissolved, recalled, reinvented, and reshaped by the experiences of absolute monarchy, civil war, and revolution. This collection reveals how these institutions were a critical component of state building.

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Maija Jansson - Realities of Representation, State Building in Early Modern Europe and European Amer ica (2007).pdf

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Richard L. Hume - Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scala wags, The Constitutional Conventions of Radical Re construction (2008().jpg

USA Books1 - Richard L. Hume - Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawag...titutional Conventions of Radical Reconstruction 2008.jpg

After the Civil War, Congress required ten former Confederate states to rewrite their constitutions before they could be readmitted to the Union. An electorate composed of newly enfranchised former slaves, native Southern whites (minus significant numbers of disenfranchised former Confederate officials), and a small contingent of "carpetbaggers," or outside whites, sent delegates to ten constitutional conventions. Derogatorily labeled "black and tan" by their detractors, these assemblies wrote constitutions and submitted them to Congress and to the voters in their respective states for approval. Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags offers a quantitative study of these decisive but little-understood assemblies--the first elected bodies in the United States to include a significant number of blacks.Richard L. Hume and Jerry B. Gough scoured manuscript census returns to determine the age, occupation, property holdings, literacy, and slaveholdings of 839 of the conventions' 1,018 delegates. Carefully analyzing convention voting records on certain issues--including race, suffrage, and government structure--they correlate delegates' voting patterns with their racial and socioeconomic status. Hume and Gough then assign a "Republican support score" to each delegate who voted often enough to count, establishing the degree to which each delegate adhered to the Republican leaders' program at his convention. Using these scores, they divide the delegates into three groups--radicals, swing voters, and conservatives--and incorporate their quantitative findings into the narrative histories of each convention, providing, for the first time, a detailed analysis of these long-overlooked assemblies.

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Richard L. Hume - Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scala wags, The Constitutional Conventions of Radical Re construction (2008).pdf

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Fay Botham - Almighty God Created the Races, Chris tianity, Interracial Marriage, and American Law (2 009).jpg

In this cultural history of interracial marriage and its legal regulation in the United States, Fay Botham argues that religion--specifically, Protestant and Catholic beliefs about marriage and race--had a significant effect on legal decisions concerning miscegenation and marriage in the century following the Civil War. She contends that the white southern Protestant notion that God "dispersed" the races and the American Catholic emphasis on human unity and common origins point to ways that religion influenced the course of litigation and illuminate the religious bases for Christian racist and antiracist movements.

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Fay Botham - Almighty God Created the Races, Chris tianity, Interracial Marriage, and American Law (2 009).pdf

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Don B. Wilmeth, Christopher Bigsby - The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume 1, Beginnings to 1870 (2006).jpg

The first multi-volume history of the American theater to have been published, The Cambridge History of American Theatre is an authoritative and wide-ranging history of American theater in all its dimensions. It recognizes changing styles of presentation and performance, and addresses the economic context that conditions the drama presented. Volume One brings together the work of ten major authorities on American theater and drama. Like each of the three volumes, Volume One includes an extensive overview and timeline followed by chapters on specific aspects of American theater up to c. 1870.

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Don B. Wilmeth, Christopher Bigsby - The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume 2, 1870-1945 (1999).jpg

USA Books1 - Don B. Wilmeth, Christopher Bigsby - The Cambridge His...History of American Theatre, Volume 2, 1870-1945 1999.jpg

Volume Two begins in the post-Civil War period and traces the development of American theater up to 1945. It discusses the role of vaudeville, European influences, the rise of the Little Theater movement, changing audiences, modernism, the Federal Theater movement, major actors and the rise of the star system, and the achievements of notable playwrights. This volume places American theater in its social, economic, and political context.

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Akbar Ahmed - Journey into America, The Challenge of Islam (2010).jpg

Nearly seven million Muslims live in the United States today, and their relations with non-Muslims are strained. Many Americans associate Islam with figures such as Osama bin Laden, and they worry about homegrown terrorists. To shed light on this increasingly important religious group and counter mutual distrust, renowned scholar Akbar Ahmed conducted the most comprehensive study to date of the American Muslim community. Journey into America explores and documents how Muslims are fitting into U.S. society, placing their experience within the larger context of American identity. This eye-opening book also offers a fresh and insightful perspective on American history and society.

Following up on his critically acclaimed Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization (Brookings, 2007), Ahmed and his team of young researchers traveled for a year through more than seventy-five cities across the United States from New York City to Salt Lake City; from Las Vegas to Miami; from the large Muslim enclave in Dearborn, Michigan, to small, predominantly white towns like Arab, Alabama. They visited homes, schools, and over one hundred mosques to discover what Muslims are thinking and how they are living every day in America.

In this unprecedented exploration of American Muslim communities, Ahmed asked challenging questions: Can we expect an increase in homegrown terrorism? How do American Muslims of Arab descent differ from those of other origins (for example, Somalia or South Asia)? Why are so many white women converting to Islam? How can a Muslim become accepted fully as an American , and what does that mean? He also delves into the potentially sticky area of relations with other religions. For example, is there truly a deep divide between Muslims and Jews in America? And how well do Muslims get along with other religious groups, such as Mormons in Utah?

Journey into America is equal parts anthropological research, listening tour, and travelogue. Whereas Ahmed's previous book took the reader into homes, schools, and mosques in the Muslim world, his new quest takes us into the heart of America and its Muslim communities. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of America today.

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Akbar Ahmed - Journey into America, The Challenge of Islam (2010).pdf

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Beatrice A. Ojakangas - Great Old Fashioned Americ an Desserts (2004).jpg

"Great Old Fashioned American Desserts" offers a diversity of desserts that span the various periods and regions of American cooking. Some dishes are accompanied by chatty notes, explaining, for example, that waffles were introduced by the Dutch in the 1800s. But these are mere embellishments, and the business side of this book is the generous assortment of enticing, lucid recipes meant to be used by modern-day bakers. Creole sweet-potato and old Arkansas vinegar pies are examples of "America's favorite dessert." The chocolate Kentucky bourbon-pecan cake and "Lazy-Daisy" cake (first baked, then topped with a brown sugar-and-butter topping) are among the more unusual cake contributions.
Pastry and dough-based items include cream puffs and New Orleans beignets, while cooked fruit comes to the fore in baked pears with mint cream, plum duff and fresh berry tumble. Puddings and ice creams round out a collection that will nudge dessert lovers into the kitchen to recapture old favorites and discover new ones.

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Beatrice A. Ojakangas - Great Old Fashioned Americ an Desserts (2004).pdf

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BYOB Chicago - Your Guide to Bring-Your-Own-Bottle Restaurants and Wine & Spirits Stores in Chicago - 3rd edition (2009).jpg

USA Books1 - BYOB Chicago - Your Guide to Bring-Your-Own-Bottle Re...nd Wine Spirits Stores in Chicago - 3rd edition 2009.jpg

Dedicated exclusively to the Bring-Your-Own-Bottle (BYOB) landscape in Chicagoland, this indispensable purse-sized guidebook lists nearly 300 BYOBs located in and around the city and suburbs. Featuring restaurants that not only allow but encourage customers to bring their own wine, beer, or spirits, this updated edition reflects the continued growth of the BYOB trend in Chicago, as more people are learning to appreciate the savings and personal enjoyment of bringing their own bottles of wine, beer, or spirits to dinner. Handy indices listing restaurants by location and cuisine are coupled with insightful information on food-pairing guidelines, BYOB etiquette, and local liquor laws to help restaurant-goers create a perfect dining experience.

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BYOB Chicago - Your Guide to Bring-Your-Own-Bottle Restaurants and Wine & Spirits Stores in Chicago - 3rd edition (2009).pdf

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David Levinson - Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers, and W. E. B. Du Bois, A History of the A. M. E. Zion Church (2006).jpg

USA Books1 - David Levinson - Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers, and W..... Du Bois, A History of the A. M. E. Zion Church 2006.jpg

Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers, and W. E. B. Du Bois is the often heroic tale of a small group of African Americans who founded and have maintained their church in a small New England town for nearly 140 years. The church is the Clinton African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the town is Great Barrington, Massachusetts--the home town of the leading African American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois attended the church as a youth and wrote about it, these writings being one source for this history. The book gives readers a broad view of the details of the church's history and recounts the story of its growth and declines and revivals within the context of regional history.

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David Levinson - Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers, and W. E. B. Du Bois, A History of the A. M. E. Zion Church (2006).pdf

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Elizabeth Poskitt, Laurel Edmunds - Management of Childhood Obesity (2008).jpg

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious problems facing the developed world. It is damaging to the medical and psychological well-being of the child and casts a shadow on their future health, leading to serious illness and ultimately premature death. Management of Childhood Obesity provides practical, realistic and easily implemented advice on sensitive approaches to children and their families in a very accessible form for all practitioners involved in the care of overweight children. Changes to diet and activity are reviewed in detail but also with the whole spectrum of eating within the family and community, including sedentariness and the significance of sleep in preventing overweight.

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Elizabeth Poskitt, Laurel Edmunds - Management of Childhood Obesity (2008).pdf

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Fabio Parasecoli - Bite Me, Food in Popular Cultur e (2008).jpg

Food is not only something we eat, it is something we use to define ourselves. Ingestion and incorporation are central to our connection with the world outside our bodies. Food's powerful social, economic, political and symbolic roles cannot be ignored - what we eat is a marker of power, cultural capital, class, ethnic and racial identity. Bite Me considers the ways in which popular culture reveals our relationship with food and our own bodies and how these have become an arena for political and ideological battles. Drawing on an extraordinary range of material - films, books, comics, songs, music videos, websites, slang, performances, advertising and mass-produced objects - Bite Me invites the reader to take a fresh look at today's products and practices to see how much food shapes our lives, perceptions and identities.

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