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Amusing Ourselves to Death
by Neil PostmanTelevision has conditioned us to tolerate visually entertaining material measured out in spoonfuls of time to the detriment of rational public discourse and reasoned public affairs. In this elloquent persuasive book, Neil Postman alerts us to the real and present dangers of this state of affairs, and offers compeling suggestions as to how to withstand the media onslaught. Before we hand over politics, education, religion, and journalism to the show business demands of the television age, we must recognize the ways in which the media shape our lives and the ways we can in turn shape them to serve our highest goals.
Beyond All Reason
by Daniel A. Farber Suzanna SherryWould you want to be operated on by a surgeon trained at a medical school that did not evaluate its students? Would you want to fly in a plane designed by people convinced that the laws of physics are socially constructed? Would you want to be tried by a legal system indifferent to the distinction between fact and fiction? These questions may seem absurd, but these are theories being seriously advanced by radical multiculturalists that force us to ask them. These scholars assert that such concepts as truth and merit are inextricably racist and sexist, that reason and objectivity are merely sophisticated masks for ideological bias, and that reality itself is nothing more than a socially constructed mechanism for preserving the power of the ruling elite. In Beyond All Reason, liberal legal scholars Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry mount the first systematic critique of radical multiculturalism as a form of legal scholarship. Beginning with an incisive overview of the origins and basic tenets of radical multiculturalism, the authors critically examine the work of Derrick Bell, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Williams, and Richard Delgado, and explore the alarming implications of their theories. Farber and Sherry push these theories to their logical conclusions and show that radical multiculturalism is destructive of the very goals it wishes to affirm. If, for example, the concept of advancement based on merit is fraudulent, as the multiculturalists claim, the disproportionate success of Jews and Asians in our culture becomes difficult to explain without opening the door to age-old anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes. If historical and scientific truths are entirely relative social constructs, then Holocaust denial becomes merely a matter of perspective, and Creationism has as much "validity" as evolution. The authors go on to show that rather than promoting more dialogue, the radical multiculturalist preferences for legal storytelling and identity politics over reasoned argument produces an insular set of positions that resist open debate. Indeed, radical multiculturalists cannot critically examine each others' ideas without incurring vehement accusations of racism and sexism, much less engage in fruitful discussion with a mainstream that does not share their assumptions. Here again, Farber and Sherry show that the end result of such thinking is not freedom but a kind of totalitarianism where dissent cannot be tolerated and only the naked will to power remains to settle differences. Sharply written and brilliantly argued, this book is itself a model of the kind of clarity, civility, and dispassionate critical thinking which the authors seek to preserve from the attacks of the radical multiculturalists. With far-reaching implications for such issues as government control of hate speech and pornography, affirmative action, legal reform, and the fate of all minorities, Beyond All Reason is a provocative contribution to one of the most important controversies of our time.
Girls Who Said Yes
by Edward ThorneTAPE-RECORDED INTERVIEWS WITH GIRLS 16-24 WHO HAVE ACCEPTED SEXUAL PERMISSIVENESS AS A WAY OF LIFE
The End of the Dream (Ann Rule's Crime Files, Vol. #5)
by Ann RuleAmerica's #1 true crime writer, Ann Rule has brought her expertise to twelve fascinating bestsellers. Now Rule continues her blockbuster Crime Files series with a riveting case drawn from her true crime dossier: the explosive story of four talented and charismatic young men -- best friends whose bond was shattered when one among them was consumed by lethal greed and twisted desire.
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
by Philip Sugden"The publisher's blurb states that this is "the most comprehensive and best documented account of the Ripper murders ever written". I can only agree with their assessment. Historian Philip Sugden has produced a meticulously-referenced guide to all the material on the Whitechapel crimes available to date' - Nick Warren, Ripperana "An excellent survey of the Ripper case. Full, accurate, readable and up-to-date, it now becomes the narrative of choice I shall recommend on the murders when asked' Martin Fido, co-author of The Jack the Ripper A to Z
Manson in His Own Words
by Charles Manson Nuel EmmonsCharles Manson relates his version of his life and the events leading up to his ordering the brutal murders of nine people in the summer of 1969.
May God Have Mercy
by John C. TuckerIn 1982, in Grundy, Virginia, a young miner named Roger Coleman was sentenced to death for the murder of his sister-in-law. Ten years later, the sentence was carried out, despite the extraordinary efforts of Kitty Behan, a brilliant and dedicated young lawyer who devoted two years of her life to gathering evidence of Coleman's innocence, evidence so compelling that media around the world came to question the verdict. The courts, ruling on technicalities, refused to hear the new evidence and witnesses. Finally, the governor of Virginia ordered a lie-detector test to be administered on the morning of Coleman's scheduled execution, and in a chair that to Coleman surely looked like nothing so much as an electric chair.
My Lesbian Husband
by Barrie Jean BorichBarrie Jean Borich's memoir of her 14-year marriage is a subtle exploration of gender and the intricacies of butch-femme desire. My Lesbian Husband describes Borich's attraction to her partner, Linnea, and the slow building of their life together in a decaying neighborhood in Minneapolis. Borich traces both the pleasures and the wrenching difficulties of trying to construct a long-term union in the absence not only of legal and social but of everything that our aunts and uncles and parents take for granted: "names for their union in every language, the weddings of a square-chested prince and a big-busted, cinch-waisted princess at the end of every Disney movie, every Shakespeare comedy, not to Mary and Joseph, Hera and Zeus, and those little bride and groom figurines they have saved from their wedding cakes." This is as sharply observed and well-written a memoir as Jan Clausen's and Oranges, but a valentine rather than a valediction.
