Do killers, artists, and terrorists need one another? In Crimes of Art and Terror, Frank Lentricchia and Jody McAuliffe explore the disturbing adjacency of literary creativity to violence and even political terror. Lentricchia and McAuliffe begin by anchoring their penetrating discussions in the events of 9/11 and the scandal provoked by composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's reference to the destruction of the World Trade Center as a great work of art, and they go on to show how political extremism and avant-garde artistic movements have fed upon each other for at least two centuries.
Review 'Gray is one of our best social and political theorists ... This powerful and radical work opens as many doors as it closes.' "- New Statesman" 'Gray is a clever and energetic political theorist in the analytical mode. He is also dauntingly well-read and up-to-date.' "- Guardian"
The Linguistics, Neurology, and Politics of Phonics: Silent "E" Speaks Out This book explores the driving forces behind the current government-sponsored resurrection of phonics, and the arguments used to justify it. It examines the roles played by three key actors--corporate America, politicians, and state-supported reading researchers--in the formulation of what Strauss terms the neophonics political program. Essential for researchers, students, and teachers of literacy and reading, and for anyone seeking to understand what is happening in U.S. public schools today, Linguistics, Neurology, and the Politics of Phonics: Silent "E" Speaks Out: analyzes the political nature of the alleged literacy crisis in the United States, through an investigation of the political and corporate motives behind the renewed focus on phonics, and media complicity in promoting the neophonics political program as the solution to the so-called crisis; examines the scientific claims of neophonics, including methodology, linguistics, and neuroscience, and exposes the flaws in its reasoning and the weakness of its arguments; addresses the scientific, empirical investigation of letter-sound relationships in English (of phonics itself), and demonstrates the complexity of the system and its associated benefits and limitations in the theory and practice of reading; proposes actions to help make a return to politically undistorted science and to democratic classrooms a reality; and introduces, in a postscript, a formal analysis of the letter-sound system, using empirically based rules to convert one finite set of elements, the alphabet, into another, the phonemes of the spoken language.
Added by: westlife | Karma: 733.12 | Fiction literature | 18 February 2009
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The Prince
When Lorenzo de' Medici seized control of the Florentine Republic in 1512, he summarily fired the Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Signoria and set in motion a fundamental change in the way we think about politics. The person who held the aforementioned office with the tongue-twisting title was none other than Niccolo Machiavelli, who, suddenly finding himself out of a job after 14 years of patriotic service, followed the career trajectory of many modern politicians into punditry. Unable to become an on-air political analyst for a television network, he only wrote a book. But what a book The Prince is. Its essential contribution to modern political thought lies in Machiavelli's assertion of the then revolutionary idea that theological and moral imperatives have no place in the political arena. "It must be understood," Machiavelli avers, "that a prince ... cannot observe all of those virtues for which men are reputed good, because it is often necessary to act against mercy, against faith, against humanity, against frankness, against religion, in order to preserve the state." With just a little imagination, readers can discern parallels between a 16th-century principality and a 20th-century presidency. --Tim Hoga
The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society is an authoritative study of the relationship between law and social interaction. Thirty-two original essays by an international group of expert scholars examine a wide range of critical questions. Authors represent various theoretical, methodological, and political commitments, creating the first truly global overview of the field.
