In this tenth-anniversary edition, journalist Michelangelo Signorile updates his
classic Queer in America, the bestseller that exposed the hypocrisy and
prejudice that pervade mainstream American institutions. This third edition
includes a new preface and a new chapter with an eye-opening critique of
present-day America and its attitude toward gays and lesbians.
Review: "One of the most
important books of the twentieth century." Larry Kramer
A close-up on one of
American history's most magical events, JFK's inaugural week, and the creation
of the speech that inspired a generation and brought hope to a nation
"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your
country." On the January morning when John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency and
stood to speak those words, America was divided, its citizens torn by fears of
war. Kennedy's speech-called the finest since Lincoln at Gettysburg and the most
memorable of any twentieth-century American politician-did more than reassure:
it changed lives, marking the start of a brief, optimistic era of struggle
against "tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
"Ask Not is a beautifully detailed account of the week leading up to the
inaugural which stands as one of the most moving spectacles in the history of
American politics. At the heart of the narrative is Kennedy's quest to create a
speech that would distill American dreams and empower a new generation. Thurston
Clarke's portrait of JFK during what intimates called his happiest days is
balanced, revealing the President at his most dazzlingly charismatic-and
cunningly pragmatic. As the snow covers Washington in a blanket of white, as
statesmen and celebrities arrive for candlelit festivities, the perfectionist
Kennedy pushes himself to the limit, to find the words that would capture what
he most truly believed and which would far outlast his own life. For everyone
who seeks to understand the fascination with all things Kennedy, the answer can
be found in "Ask Not."
An electrifying
story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil
rights struggle
In 1925, Detroit was
a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent
of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for
manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and
violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made
the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white
neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house;
suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally
killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes.
And so it began-a
chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into
the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality.
Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of
Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that
documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet
family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class.
Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of
one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.
Manila, 2000. Forty-four-year-old Roger Caracera returns to his
birthplace after nearly three decades in the United States. He has come
to bury the corrupt, charismatic head of the family sugar dynasty: his
estranged father, Jesus. To Caracera's chagrin and pleasure, he is now
viewed by his countrymen as the representative American; a local tabloid
even refers to him as a General Douglas MacArthur look-alike. And when
his father's will is read, Caracera is stunned to discover that he has
been left half a million dollars.
Unable to live with this burdensome inheritance, he decides to give his
money away. But who among the millions of needy Filipinos is he to focus
on?
Traversing high and low life, societies rank and respectable, and with a
cast of characters that includes a slum-dwelling boy hustler, a
middle-aged American pederast, a rising Filipino tennis player, a
calculating society matron, and a Peace Corps worker turned trophy wife,
"The Disinherited is an incisive and illuminating exploration of the
impulse to do good in the world and the paradoxical harm brought on by
generosity.
In the tradition of
Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie a brilliant new voice tells an exuberant and
tender story of love and loss, sex, karma, and colonialism set in 1920s India.
Review: "Siddharth
Dhanvant Shanghvi is 26, and his first novel, "The Last Song of Dusk," has won
the prestigious Betty Trask Award in Britain, has been the talk of the town in
his native India and now comes to America, where Shanghvi spends half the year,
in the Bay Area.
"But the book arrives on a swelling chorus of hype that is a mixed blessing for
any first-time novelist: Is he the next Arundhati Roy, or Salman Rushdie version
7.0, or Zadie Smith crossed with Vikram Seth? In the end, "The Last Song of
Dusk" might evoke whiffs of all of them, but the book is nobody's love child but
Shanghvi's -- lush, witty and eventually achingly sad.
"British rule is in its twilight in India. Anuradha is about to meet Vardhmaan,
the doctor to whom her marriage is being arranged. Anuradha is so beautiful that
when she leaves her parents' home, peacocks line up to bid farewell. Vardhmaan
is so handsome that women feign illness to have him examine them. At their very
first meeting, Anuradha shakes Vardhmaan's image of the good vegetarian Hindu
woman by ordering a chicken club sandwich. But mere poultry cannot stand in the
way of destiny. Shanghvi sets up a fairy tale, even provides a wicked
stepmother-in-law with a foulmouthed parrot and then shatters the
happily-ever-after."
More.
Queer
in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power 
