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Longitudinal Studies on the Organization of Social Interaction
by Simona Pekarek Doehler Esther González-Martínez Johannes WagnerThis book advances our understanding of change over time in human social conduct, and represents the first consolidated effort to reveal how micro-analytic studies of social interaction address such issues. The book presents a collection of longitudinal studies drawing on conversation analysis across a variety of settings, practices, languages and timescales, and analyses the ways in which participants produce and deal with practices changing over time. This edited collection will interest students and scholars of conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, interactional linguistics and pragmatics.
Longtime Californ'
by Victor Nee Brett De BaryBeginning with the immigrants who left poverty-ridden villages in China to try for a better livelihood in America, the narratives and extensive interviews of Longtime Californ' tell the true story of the Chinese in America. A young Chinese girl tells of being sold into slavery, brought to America, and rescued by a missionary; men of Chinatown recall the awful conditions and long waits on Angel Island before being allowed into the country, and remember the backbreaking experience of building the railroads that opened the West. The young Chinese are also here: some are angry and frustrated, spending their time on street corners and in gang fights; other are Marxist radicals trying to create social, political, and economic change in Chinatown ghetto. And there are the workers who go back and forth each day to the garment factories and the shops, each with his or her own story to tell, each contributing his or her share to the country that is San Francisco Chinatown. Throughout these and other stories the intricate patterns of Chinese life emerge as Chinese traditions and American customs combine to create the unique experience of Chinese-Americas, Longtime Californ' goes beyond the hand laundries and restaurants with which Americans often associate the Chinese and unveils the secret societies, the powerful family associations, and the daily lives of the people of Chinatown.
Longtime Companions: Autobiographies of Gay Male Fidelity
by Alfred Lees Ronald NelsonLongtime Companions: Autobiographies of Gay Male Fidelity provides a sophisticated alternative to “anything goes” gay literature. Challenging the stereotype that gay men are incapable of lasting and successful relationships, 15 long-term gay couples share slices of their own lives to give you insight into their present relationships, while some discuss life after their mates have passed on. You will find that their stories offer an inspirational and richly fulfilling alternative to an empty life of promiscuity that lacks true love.Through a treasury of autobiographical essays, Longtime Companions documents how committed gay male unions can be as enduring, nurturing, and diverse as heterosexual marriages and proves that loving commitments and life-sharing are not exclusive to heterosexual unions. A celebration of gay diversity, this book offers you insights from contributors of different ages, professions, geographic locations, and attitudes. You will learn the intimate details of the couples’lives, including: how they met their partners how soon they committed to each other how long the couples have been together--from 14 years to over 50 years their keys to leading successful, happy lives the ways in which their relationships fulfill their personal needs and contribute to community lifeYou will come to realize the true strength of these men’s relationships as you share in their struggles within a society that offers them little recognition or support for their successful relationships. Co-editor Alfred Lees explains in the introduction to Longtime Companions, “We’ve all worked diligently to make our partnerships sound, nurturing, and enduring. We’ve done this without any social motivation, largely without role models, in the face of ‘official’disapproval or contempt. We’ve told our stories here to refute--by the simple facts of our experience--the grotesque misrepresentation of gays as being incapable of stable, committed relationships.” Will add more. . . Through a treasury of autobiographical essays, Longtime Companions documents how committed gay-male unions can be as enduring, nurturing, and diverse as heterosexual marriages and proves that loving commitment and life-sharing are not exclusive to heterosexual unions. A celebration of gay diversity, contributors vary in age, profession, geographic location, and attitudes. You will learn the intimate details of the couples’lives, including: how they met their partners how soon they committed to each other how they managed to collaborate on successful, fulfilling lives how some have maintained their commitment as part of an open relationshipYou will come to realize the true strength of these men’s relationships as you share in their struggles within a society that offers them little recognition or support for their successful relationships. Co-Author Alfred Lees explains in the Introduction to Longtime Companions, “We’ve all worked diligently to make our partnerships sound, nurturing, and enduring. We&’ve done this without any social innovation, largely without role models, in the face of ‘official” disapproval or contempt. We’ve told our stories here to refute--by the simple facts of our experience--the grotesque misrepresentation of gays as being incapable of stable, committed relationships.”
Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics
by Jennifer BaumgardnerFor the acclaimed author and activist Jennifer Baumgardner, bisexuality has always been more than the "sexual non-preference of the '90s." In Look Both Ways, Baumgardner takes a close look at the growing visibility of gay and bisexual characters, performers, and issues on the national cultural stage. Despite the prevalence of bisexuality among Generation X and Y women, she finds that it continues to be marginalized by both gay and straight cultures, and dismissed either as a phase or a cop-out. With intimacy and humor, Baumgardner discusses her own experience as a bisexual, and the struggle she's undergone to reconcile the privilege she's garnered as a woman who is perceived as straight and the empowerment and satisfaction she's derived from her relationships with women.Part memoir, part pop-culture study, Look Both Ways connects the prominent dots of a bisexual community (Alix Kates Shulman, Ani DiFranco, Rebecca Walker, and, of course, Anne Heche) that Baumgardner argues have bridged feminist aims with those of the gay rights movement. Look Both Ways is a compelling and current study in bisexual lives lived secretly and openly, and an exploration of the lessons learned by writers, artists, and activists who have refused the either/or paradigm defended by both gay and straight communities.
Looking After Children: A Practitioner's Guide
by Hayat Ghazal Raymond LemayLooking After Children is an assessment and planning approach for children and youth in out-of-home care, first developed in the UK, and since 1997 adapted and used increasingly in Canada, particularly in Ontario. The approach is developmental and strengths based. The Assessment and Action Record (AAR), the core clinical tool, provides the basis for an in-depth assessment interview which then leads to a comprehensive care plan. The AAR is computerized and provides the possibility of data aggregation, and the recent revision allows for comparability among Canadian children as assessed by the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Looking After Children: A Practitioner's Guide includes training material that will help practitioners understand and put the LAC approach and tools to effective use.
Looking Back
by Neil J. Dorans Sandip SinharayIn 2006, Paul W. Holland retired from Educational Testing Service (ETS) after a career spanning five decades. In 2008, ETS sponsored a conference, Looking Back, honoring his contributions to applied and theoretical psychometrics and statistics. Looking Back attracted a large audience that came to pay homage to Paul Holland and to hear presentations by colleagues who worked with him in special ways over those 40+ years. This book contains papers based on these presentations, as well as vignettes provided by Paul Holland before each section. The papers in this book attest to how Paul Holland's pioneering ideas influenced and continue to influence several fields such as social networks, causal inference, item response theory, equating, and DIF. He applied statistical thinking to a broad range of ETS activities in test development, statistical analysis, test security, and operations. The original papers contained in this book provide historical context for Paul Holland's work alongside commentary on some of his major contributions by noteworthy statisticians working today.
Looking Back into the Future: Identity and Insurgency in Northeast India
by M. S. PrabhakaraThe book examines questions of identity, ethnicity, sovereignty and insurgency in northeastern India, and especially on Assam and its neighbourhood. Written by an academic-journalist, the various articles situate these in their larger social, economic, political and, above all, historical context, the last being especially important in their becoming a part of colonial India relatively late, well after colonial control was established in the rest of India. Based on close, ground level experience involving extensive travel and interaction with the people, this collection is the result of a long journalistic career spanning nearly 50 years in the northeast region. Written in simple, lucid language, the essays cover a range of themes including culture, belief, and identity; homeland and language politics; and insurgency and separatism. The volume also achieves a uniquely dual historical value – while the articles themselves include a lot of historical information tracing the roots of the various issues discussed, the articles themselves range from 1974 to 2010, providing the modern reader with a series of historical moments captured in their immediacy. Of interest to students, academics, researchers in politics, peace & conflict studies, politics, sociology, history, language, those interested in northeast India, policy-makers, cultural studies, etc.
Looking Back, Moving Forward
by Girish DaswaniHow do Ghanaian Pentecostals resolve the contradictions of their own faith while remaining faithful to their religious identity? Bringing together the anthropology of Christianity and the anthropology of ethics, Girish Daswani's Looking Back, Moving Forward investigates the compromises with the past that members of Ghana's Church of Pentecost make in order to remain committed Christians.Even as church members embrace the break with the past that comes from being "born-again," many are less concerned with the boundaries of Christian practice than with interpersonal questions - the continuity of suffering after conversion, the causes of unhealthy relationships, the changes brought about by migration - and how to deal with them. By paying ethnographic attention to the embodied practices, interpersonal relationships, and moments of self-reflection in the lives of members of the Church of Pentecost in Ghana and amongst the Ghanaian diaspora in London, Looking Back, Moving Forward explores ethical practice as it emerges out of the questions that church members and other Ghanaian Pentecostals ask themselves.
Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (Oxford Studies in Anthropology of Language Series)
by Jonathan RosaLooking like a Language, Sounding like a Race examines the emergence of linguistic and ethnoracial categories in the context of Latinidad. <p><p>The book draws from more than twenty-four months of ethnographic and sociolinguistic fieldwork in a Chicago public school, whose student body is more than 90% Mexican and Puerto Rican, to analyze the racialization of language and its relationship to issues of power and national identity. It focuses specifically on youth socialization to U.S. Latinidad as a contemporary site of political anxiety, raciolinguistic transformation, and urban inequity. <p><p> Jonathan Rosa's account studies the fashioning of Latinidad in Chicago's highly segregated Near Northwest Side; he links public discourse concerning the rising prominence of U.S. Latinidad to the institutional management and experience of raciolinguistic identities there. <p><p>Anxieties surrounding Latinx identities push administrators to transform "at risk" Mexican and Puerto Rican students into "young Latino professionals." This institutional effort, which requires students to learn to be and, importantly, sound like themselves in highly studied ways, reveals administrators' attempts to navigate a precarious urban terrain in a city grappling with some of the nation's highest youth homicide, dropout, and teen pregnancy rates. Rosa explores the ingenuity of his research participants' responses to these forms of marginalization through the contestation of political, ethnoracial, and linguistic borders.
Looking behind the Label
by Nik Summers Hiram Samel Sebastian Koos Tim Bartley Gustavo SetriniWhat does it mean when consumers "shop with a conscience" and choose products labeled as fair or sustainable? Does this translate into meaningful changes in global production processes? To what extent are voluntary standards implemented and enforced, and can they really govern global industries? Looking behind the Label presents an informative introduction to global production and ethical consumption, tracing the links between consumers' choices and the practices of multinational producers and retailers. Case studies of several types of products--wood and paper, food, apparel and footwear, and electronics--are used to reveal what lies behind voluntary rules and to critique predominant assumptions about ethical consumption as a form of political expression.
Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike, Second Edition
by Michael Aaron Rockland Angus Kress GillespieA twelve-lane behemoth cutting through the least scenic parts of the Garden State, the New Jersey Turnpike may lack the romantic allure of highways like Route 66, but it might just be a more accurate symbol of American life, representing the nation at both its best and its worst. When Angus Gillespie and Michael Rockland wrote Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1989, they simply wanted to express their fascination with a road that many commuters regarded with annoyance or indifference. Little did they expect that it would be hailed as a classic, listed by the state library alongside works by Whitman and Fitzgerald as one of the ten best books ever written about New Jersey or by a New Jerseyan. Now Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike is back in a special updated and expanded edition, examining how this great American motorway has changed over the past thirty-five years. You’ll learn how the turnpike has become an icon inspiring singers and poets. And you’ll meet the many people it has affected, including the homeowners displaced by its construction, the highway patrol and toll-takers who work on it, and the drivers who speed down its lanes every day.
Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil's Religious Arena
by John BurdickFor a generation, the Catholic Church in Brazil has enjoyed international renown as one of the most progressive social forces in Latin America. The Church's creation of Christian Base Communities (CEBs), groups of Catholics who learn to read the Bible as a call for social justice, has been widely hailed. Still, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that the CEBs are lagging far behind the explosive growth of Brazil's two other major national religious movements—Pentacostalism and Afro-Brazilian Umbanda. On the basis of his extensive fieldwork in Rio di Janeiro, including detailed life histories of women, blacks, youths, and the marginal poor, John Burdick offers the first in-depth explanation of why the radical Catholic Church is losing, and Pentecostalism and Umbanda winning, the battle for souls in urban Brazil.
Looks Good on Paper?
by Leslie S. PratchLeslie S. Pratch is a practicing psychologist who focuses on assessing and coaching executives who occupy or are candidates for top positions in business organizations. In this book, she shares insights from more than twenty years of executive evaluations and offers an empirically based approach to identify executives who will be effective within organizations -- and to flag those who will ultimately fail -- by evaluating aspects of personality and character that are hidden beneath the surface.Pratch compares candidates with impressive careers and tries to determine which ones are likely to act with consistently high integrity and exhibit sound, timely judgment when faced with unanticipated business problems. Central to effective leadership is a psychological quality called "active coping," which Pratch defines and explores by referencing case studies, historical figures, and her own scholarly work. This book speaks not only to those in hiring positions and their advisors but more widely to leaders and anyone who wishes to learn more about their own character and the abilities of those around them. She offers knowledge, asks questions, and challenges common perceptions, providing a practical tool for those in business and for general readers.
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
by Safi Bahcall* Next Big Idea Club Selection *Washington Post's "10 Leadership Books to Watch for in 2019," Adam Grant's "19 New Leadership Books to Read in 2019," Inc.com's "10 Business Books You Need to Read in 2019," Business Insider's "14 Books Everyone Will Be Reading in 2019"“This book has everything: new ideas, bold insights, entertaining history and convincing analysis. Not to be missed by anyone who wants to understand how ideas change the world.” —Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? What can we learn about human nature and world history from a glass of water?In Loonshots, physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.Drawing on the science of phase transitions, Bahcall shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.Using examples that range from the spread of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online, and stories of thieves and geniuses and kings, Bahcall shows how this new kind of science helps us understand the behavior of companies and the fate of empires. Loonshots distills these insights into lessons for creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries everywhere.Over the past decade, researchers have been applying the tools and techniques of phase transitions to understand how birds flock, fish swim, brains work, people vote, criminals behave, ideas spread, diseases erupt, and ecosystems collapse. If twentieth-century science was shaped by the search for fundamental laws, like quantum mechanics and gravity, the twenty-first will be shaped by this new kind of science. Loonshots is the first to apply these tools to help all of us unlock our potential to create and nurture the crazy ideas that change the world.
Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business
by Bruce TipLooptail is Bruce Poon Tip's extraordinary first-person account of his entrepreneurial instincts to start and develop G Adventures, the highly successful international travel adventure company - and along the way he reveals his unusual management secrets that not only keep his employees fully engaged and energized but also keep his customers extremely happy.His unique appraoch has worked in marvellous ways. Poon Tip has created an entirely new and refreshing approach to management. For example, there is no CEO at G Adventures - instead, every employee is a CEO, empowered to make instantaneous decisions to help clients on the spot. But while there's no CEO, there is a company Mayor, who take the pulse of corporate morale. There's no HR department - but there is a Talent Agency and company Culture Club.It hasn't always been easy to try to balance his desire for a socially responsible company along with the desire to generate profits. But thanks to Poon Tip's vision, G Adventures has floruished and has done its best to maintain its looptail approach. In short, it's been an extraordinary ride, and in many ways G Adventures is at the vanguard of what modern-day companies are beginning to look like.
Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business
by Bruce TipLooptail is Bruce Poon Tip's extraordinary first-person account of his entrepreneurial instincts to start and develop G Adventures, the highly successful international travel adventure company - and along the way he reveals his unusual management secrets that not only keep his employees fully engaged and energized but also keep his customers extremely happy.His unique appraoch has worked in marvellous ways. Poon Tip has created an entirely new and refreshing approach to management. For example, there is no CEO at G Adventures - instead, every employee is a CEO, empowered to make instantaneous decisions to help clients on the spot. But while there's no CEO, there is a company Mayor, who take the pulse of corporate morale. There's no HR department - but there is a Talent Agency and company Culture Club.It hasn't always been easy to try to balance his desire for a socially responsible company along with the desire to generate profits. But thanks to Poon Tip's vision, G Adventures has floruished and has done its best to maintain its looptail approach. In short, it's been an extraordinary ride, and in many ways G Adventures is at the vanguard of what modern-day companies are beginning to look like.
Loose Connections: Joining Together In America's Fragmented Communities
by Robert WuthnowIt has become common to lament Americans' tendency to pursue individual interests apart from any institutional association. But to those who charge that Americans are at home watching television rather than getting involved in their communities, Robert Wuthnow answers that while certain kinds of civic engagement may be declining, innovative new forms are taking their place. <p><p> Acknowledging that there has been a significant change in group affiliations--away from traditional civic organizations--Wuthnow shows that there has been a corresponding movement toward affiliations that respond to individual needs and collective concerns. Many Americans are finding new and original ways to help one another through short-term task-oriented networks. Some are combining occupational skills with community interests in nonprofit and voluntary associations. Others use communication technologies, such as the World Wide Web, to connect with like-minded people in distant locations. And people are joining less formal associations, such as support groups and lobbying efforts, within their home communities. <p> People are still connected, but because of the realities of daily life, they form "loose connections." These more fluid groups are better suited to dealing with today's needs than the fraternal orders and ladies' auxiliaries of the past. Wuthnow looks at the challenges that must be faced if these innovative forms of civic involvement are to flourish, and calls for resources to be made available to strengthen the more constructive and civic dimensions of these organizations. This book helps us to understand and encourage the community spirit of today.
Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life
by Karen A. Franck Quentin StevensIn cities around the world people use a variety of public spaces to relax, to protest, to buy and sell, to experiment and to celebrate. Loose Space explores the many ways that urban residents, with creativity and determination, appropriate public space to meet their own needs and desires. Familiar or unexpected, spontaneous or planned, momentary or long-lasting, the activities that make urban space loose continue to give cities life and vitality. The book examines physical spaces and how people use them. Contributors discuss a wide range of recreational, commercial and political activities; some are conventional, others are more experimental. Some of the activities occur alongside the intended uses of planned public spaces, such as sidewalks and plazas; other activities replace former uses, as in abandoned warehouses and industrial sites. The thirteen case studies, international in scope, demonstrate the continuing richness of urban public life that is created and sustained by urbanites themselves Presents a fresh way of looking at urban public space, focusing on its positive uses and aspects. Comprises 13 detailed, well-illustrated case studies based on sustained observation and research by social scientists, architects and urban designers. Looks at a range of activities, both everyday occurrences and more unusual uses, in a variety of public spaces -- planned, leftover and abandoned. Explores the spatial and the behavioral; considers the wider historical and social context. Addresses issues of urban research, architecture, urban design and planning. Takes a broad international perspective with cases from New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Guadalajara, Athens, Tel Aviv, Melbourne, Bangkok, Kandy, Buffalo, and the North of England.
Lord Byron and Madame de Staël: Born for Opposition (Routledge Revivals)
by Joanne WilkesPublished in 1999. Lord Byron and Madam de Stael made a great impression on Europe in the throes of the Napoleonic Wars, through their personalities, the versions of themselves which they projected through their works, and their literary engagement with contemporary life. However, the strong links between them have never before been explored in detail. This pioneering study looks at their personal relations, from their verbal sparring in Regency society, through the friendship which developed in Switzerland after Byron left England in 1816, to Byron’s tributes to Mme de Stael after her death. It concentrates on their literary links, both direct responses to each other’s works, and the copious evidence of shared concerns. The study deals with their treatment of gender, their grappling with the possibilities for heroic endeavour, their engagement with the social and political situations of Britain, France and Italy, and their conceptions of the role of the writer. Although Byron will need no introduction, Mme de Stael’s standing as a French romantic writer of the first rank is made plain by the strong impact of her writings on the English Poet.
Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity
by Clara TuiteThe Regency period in general, and the aristocrat-poet Lord Byron in particular, were notorious for scandal, but the historical circumstances of this phenomenon have yet to be properly analysed. Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity explores Byron's celebrity persona in the literary, social, political and historical contexts of Regency Britain and post-Napoleonic Europe that produced it. Clara Tuite argues that the Byronic enigma that so compelled contemporary audiences - and provoked such controversy with its spectacular Romantic Satanism - can be understood by means of 'scandalous celebrity', a new form of ambivalent fame that mediates between notoriety and traditional forms of heroic renown. Examining Byron alongside contemporary figures including Caroline Lamb, Stendhal, Napoleon Bonaparte and Lord Castlereagh, Tuite illuminates the central role played by Byron in the literary, political and sexual scandals that mark the Regency as a vital period of social transition and emergent celebrity culture.
Loris Malaguzzi and the Schools of Reggio Emilia: A selection of his writings and speeches, 1945-1993 (Contesting Early Childhood)
by Peter Moss Paola Cagliari Marina Castagnetti Claudia Giudici Carlina Rinaldi Vea VecchiLoris Malaguzzi was one of the most important figures in 20th century early childhood education, achieving world-wide recognition for his educational ideas and his role in the creation of municipal schools for young children in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia, the most successful example ever of progressive, democratic and public education. Despite Malaguzzi’s reputation, very little of what he wrote or said about early childhood education has been available in English. This book helps fill the gap, presenting for the first time in English, writings and speeches spanning 1945 to 1993, selected by a group of his colleagues from an archive established in Reggio Emilia. They range from short poems, letters and newspaper articles to extended pieces about Malaguzzi’s early life, the origins of the municipal schools and his ideas about children, pedagogy and schools. This material is organised into five chronological chapters, starting at the end of World War Two and ending just before his death, with introductions to each chapter providing background, including the historical context, the main events in Malaguzzi’s life and the rationale for the selection of documents. The book provides a unique insight into the background, thinking and work of Malaguzzi, revealing, in his own words, how his thinking developed, how he moved between theory and practice, how he border-crossed many disciplines and subjects, and how he combined many roles ranging from administrator and campaigner to researcher and pedagogue. Academics, students and practitioners alike will find this landmark publication provides rich insights into his life and work.
Lorry Driver Ils 154: A Sociological Study Of The British Lorry Driver (International Library of Sociology)
by Peter G HollowellFirst Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Los Angeles and the Summer Olympic Games: Planning Legacies (SpringerBriefs in Geography)
by Eva Kassens NoorThis open access book describes the three planning approaches and legacy impacts for the Olympic Games in one locale: the city of Los Angeles, USA. The author critically compares the similarities and differences of the LA Olympics by reviewing the 1932 and 1984 Olympics and by analyzing the concurrent planning process for the 2028 Olympics. The author unravels the conditions that make (or do not make) LA28’s argument “we have staged the Games before, we can do it again” compelling. Setting the bid’s promises into the contemporary local and global mega-event contexts, the author analyzes why LA won the bids, how those wins allowed LA to negotiate concessions with the IOC and NOC, and how legacies were planned, executed, and ultimately evolved. The author concludes with a prediction which 2028 legacy promises might and might not be fulfilled given the local and international Olympic contexts.
Los Magnates de la Prensa: Concentracion de los medios de Comunicacion en Chile
by Maria Olivia MonckebergEn esta exhaustiva investigación, María Olivia Mönckeberg, Premio Nacional de Periodismo 2009, da cuenta de las enormes influencias de los magnates de la prensa en Chile. Cada día son más evidentes los perjuicios que para la sociedad y su progreso tiene la extremada concentración de los medios de comunicación en Chile. Al terminar la dictadura, los consorcios que habían sido sólidos puntales de apoyo del gobierno militar dominaron la escena. El dejar hacer al «mercado» en este terreno ha contribuido a consolidar a estos grupos dueños de los principales medios escritos. Entretanto la radio, hasta hace poco considerada plural y diversa, también muestra síntomas de concentración en grandes cadenas. La televisión, por su parte, ha pasado a ser fundamentalmente comercial. Los restringidos espacios para otras inquietudes se han visto copados por la «farándula», los reality shows, la crónica roja y una versión audiovisual de sensacionalismo periodístico que inunda las pantallas. En esta exhaustiva investigación, María Olivia Mönckeberg, Premio Nacional de Periodismo 2009, da cuenta de las enormes influencias de los magnates de la prensa en Chile -entre ellos Agustín Edwards, Álvaro Saieh y Sebastián Piñera- y descubre el cerco ideológico-financiero que han generado a su alrededor. El acceso social a la información, el rol fiscalizador de la prensa y la propia libertad de expresión y opinión de los ciudadanos se ven condicionados por este imperio que cada vez parece adquirir más fuerza.
Los almendros en flor
by Chris StewartChris Stewart vuelve a deleitarnos con episodios asombrosos de su vida campestre en «El Valero», su ya famosa finca en la Alpujarra granadina. Las vivencias recogidas en este tercer volumen de la serie iniciada con Entre limones y El loro en el limonero #que no sólo cosecharon un enorme éxito en España, sino que también suman más de un millón de ejemplares vendidos en Reino Unido# reflejan el particular talante de una persona con una incorregible tendencia a actuar movida por cierta visión idealista de las cosas. De esas vivencias emerge el retrato de un hombre inasequible al desaliento y siempre dispuesto a acometer nuevos desafíos, ya sea cuando forma parte del Club de Admiradores de los Almendros en Flor, cuando su hija lo instruye en los usos y costumbres de los adolescentes españoles, o cuando inesperadamente le toca hacer una visita guiada de Sevilla a millonarios norteamericanos y a posteriori decide enfrentarse al trabajo de oficina en un centro de ayuda al inmigrante. Los almendros en flor es una muestra más de la capacidad de Chris para contagiarnos con su mirada abierta, su optimismo sincero y, sobre todo, su inquebrantable buen humor. La crítica ha dicho...«Exquisito [...]. El estilo consistente y dinámico de Stewart, así como su falta de pretensiones, hacen que la narración avance con fluidez.»The Daily Telegraph «Un libro maravilloso [...] fiel retrato de un lugar y su gente [...]. No olvide meterlo en su equipaje de vacaciones y dejarse llevar.»The Daily Mail