Cultural Literature

Gathering for the first time all of Claude L vi-Strauss's writings on Japanese civilization, The Other Face of the Moon forms a sustained meditation into the French anthropologist's dictum that to understand one's own culture, one must regard it from the...

High priestesses are few and far between, white ones in Africa even more so. When Diane Esguerra hears of a mysterious Austrian woman worshipping the Ifa river goddess Oshun in Nigeria, her curiosity is aroused. It is the start of an extraordinary...

This revisionary account of the Oromo people and the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia transforms our perception of the country's development, rebutting the common depiction of the Oromo as no more than a destructive force and demonstrating their significant...

In 1910, the Tuxedo Jazz Band played its first show at the Tuxedo Dance Hall in Storyville under Oscar Celestin. The popular ensemble went on to play all over New Orleans, as well as across the South and the nation. In 1953, it became the first jazz band...

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance In 1923, the Urban League's Opportunity magazine made its first appearance. Spearheaded by the noted sociologist Charles S. Johnson, it became, along with the N.A.A.C.P.'s Crisis magazine, one of the vehicles that drove...

How do we ensure security and, at the same time, safeguard civil liberties? The Open Society Paradox challenges the conventional wisdom of those on both sides of the debate--leaders who want unlimited authority and advocates who would sacrifice security...

Elaine Sciolino, the former Paris Bureau Chief of the New York Times, invites us on a tour of her favorite Parisian street, offering an homage to street life and the pleasures of Parisian living. "I can never be sad on the rue des Martyrs," Sciolino...

Rediscover the most important book on black-white relationships in America in a special 50th anniversary edition introduced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white people. It is a nation of...

Life in the city, for the millions who lived it, was once something less than the sum of their lifestyle choices: they woke up, they ate, they shoveled coal, loved, hated, prayed, mated, reproduced, died. For most, the home was not a display object but a...

THE BOOK THAT TELLS THE WHOLE STORY!#1 New York Times bestselling author Jerome Corsi predicts that an Obama presidency will leave the United States weakened, diminished, and divided. Barack Obama stepped onto the national political stage when the...

On November 4, 2008, the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States showed that the country had finally overcome its most hurtful, shameful, and enduring legacy--slavery. Though Obama's election showed progress,...

For the first time, the definitive account of America's most powerful, most secretive, and most controversial nonprofit, and how far it has strayed from its origins. The National Rifle Association is unique in American life. Few other civic organizations...

The Norsk H stfest: A Celebration of Ethnic Food and Ethnic Identity Paul Thomas Emch SIL International* and the International Museum of Cultures Publications in Ethnography 41 What does it mean to be Norwegian-American? This study, of interest to laymen...

An American institution, Sun Records has a history with many chapters -- its Memphis origins with visionary Sam Phillips, the breakthrough recordings of Elvis Presley, and the studio's immense influence on the sound of popular music. But behind the...

In recent years, the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida, one of the first scholars to...

2020 upended every aspect of our lives. But where is our world heading next? Will pandemic, economic instability, and social distance lead to deeper inequalities, more nationalism, and further erosion of democracies around the world? Or are we moving...