Böcker utgivna av Beacon Press

"Chilean Pablo Neruda is Latin America's greatest poet and one of the finest ever to have written in the Spanish language. The Peruvian poet, Cesar Vallejo, part Indian and born in a mining village, ranks not far below Neruda. Robert Bly is one of America's foremost poets, and a translator of uncommon brilliance. The combination makes for a priceless volume."-Long Beach Press Telegram

Canons, Culture, and History. A brilliantly argued positive vision of American education and culture.

Japan, Germany, the United States, and the Race for Environmental Technology

"Provocative. . . . [Ruether's] impressive scholarship, interweaving social history with religious history, puts the family in a fascinating historical context."-Marilyn Gardner, The Christian Science MonitorHow did a religion whose founding proponents advocated a shocking disregard of earthly ties come to extol the virtues of the "traditional" family? In this richly textured history of the relationship between Christianity and the family, Rosemary Radford Ruether traces the development of these centerpieces of modern life to reveal the misconceptions at the heart of the "family values" debate."Though a new reading of history, [Ruether] leads us to the question, Is there a new way of reading family, sex, and procreation theologically that can support a more just and sustainable vision of family, home, and work?"-Rosemary Keller, editor of In Our Own Voices: Four Centuries of American Women's Religious Writing"Well-researched, insightfully honest and engaging. . . . The appeal of Ruether's book is wide. [Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family] forces the reader to assess his or her own understanding of family and family systems. Ruether's book is long overdue."-Nancy Hawkins, America"A highly readable and important political stab at timely theological and cultural questions."-Sandra Collins, Library JournalRosemary Radford Ruether, one of the world's leading feminist theologians, is the Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology at the Garrett-Evangelical Seminary. She is author of over thirty books, including Sexism and God-Talk and Womanguides, and lives in Evanston, Illinois.

How did a religion whose founding proponents advocated a shocking disregard of earthly ties come to extol the virtues of the "traditional" family? In this richly textured history of the relationship between Christianity and the family Rosemary Radford Ruether traces the development of these centerpieces of modern life to reveal the misconceptions at the heart of the "family values" debate.

Taking a Chance on God explores how lesbians and gay men can claim both a positive gay identity and a fulfilling life of Christian faith.

The radical sexuality of gay American men in the 1970s is often seen as a shameful period of excess that led to the AIDS crisis. Beyond Shame claims that when the gay community divorced itself from this allegedly tainted legacy, the tragic result was an intergenerational disconnect because the original participants were unable to pass on a sense of pride and identity to younger generations. Indeed, one reason for the current rise in HIV, Moore argues, is precisely due to this destructive occurrence, which increased the willingness of younger gay men to engage in unsafe sex.Lifting the'veil of AIDS,' Moore recasts the gay male sexual culture of the 1970s as both groundbreaking and creative-provocatively comparing extreme sex to art. He presents a powerful yet nuanced snapshot of a maligned, forgotten era. Moore rescues gay America's past, present, and future from a disturbing spiral of destruction and AIDS-related shame, illustrating why it's critical for the gay community to reclaim the decade.

On September 9, 1919, an American nightmare came true. The entire Boston police force deserted their posts, leaving the city virtually defenseless. Women were raped on street corners, stores were looted, and pedestrians were beaten and robbed while crowds not only looked on but cheered. The police strike and the mayhem that followed made an inconspicuous governor, Calvin Coolidge, known throughout America, turning him into a national hero and, eventually, a president. It also created a monster: for two days, more than 700,000 residents of Boston's urban core were without police protection, and the mob ruled the streets.

Cliff and Ossi have grown up in Plymouth on the island of Tobago, their lives turning on the axis of small-town life. One day they watch the arrival of a couple and their child at a luxurious house overlooking the ocean. The couple invites Cliff into their home and lives, and in that cool'flim-style' house, the harsh, brittle life of urban Plymouth is kept briefly at bay, desires obscuring differences in class and race. But then things begin to go wrong-money vanishes, the couple's car disappears-and those differences are brought suddenly to light, raising unsettling questions about relationships, wealth, and responsibility.

In a blend of intimate memoir and passionate advocacy, Nancy Mairs takes on the subject woven through all her writing: disability and its effect on life, work, and spirit.

Charles C. Calhoun's Longfellow gives life, at last, to the most popular American poet who ever lived, a nineteenth-century cultural institution of extraordinary influence and the"e;one poet average, nonbookish Americans still know by heart"e; (Dana Gioia).Calhoun's Longfellow emerges as one of America's first powerful cultural makers: a poet and teacher who helped define Victorian culture; a major conduit for European culture coming into America; a catalyst for the Colonial Revival movement in architecture and interior design; and a critic of both Puritanism and the American obsession with material success. Longfellow is also a portrait of a man in advance of his time in championing multiculturalism: He popularized Native American folklore; revived the Evangeline story (the foundational myth of modern Acadian and Cajun identity in the U.S. and Canada); wrote powerful poems against slavery; and introduced Americans to the languages and literatures of other lands.Calhoun's portrait of post-Revolutionary Portland, Maine, where Longfellow was born, and of his time at Bowdoin and Harvard Colleges, show a deep and imaginative grasp of New England cultural history. Longfellow's tragic romantic life-his first wife dies tragically early, after a miscarriage, and his second wife, Fannie Appleton, dies after accidentally setting herself on fire-is illuminated, and his intense friendship with abolitionist and U.S. senator Charles Sumner is given as a striking example of mid-nineteenth-century romantic friendship between men. Finally, Calhoun paints in vivid detail Longfellow's family life at Craigie House, including stories of the poet's friends-Hawthorne, Emerson, Dickens, Fanny Kemble, Julia Ward Howe, and Oscar Wilde among them.

Khaled Abou El Fadl, a prominent critic of Islamic puritanism, leads off this lively debate by arguing that Islam is a deeply tolerant religion. Injunctions to violence against nonbelievers stem from misreadings of the Qur'an, he claims, and even jihad, or so-called holy war, has no basis in Qur'anic text or Muslim theology but instead grew out of social and political conflict.Many of Abou El Fadl's respondents think differently. Some contend that his brand of Islam will only appeal to Westerners and students in "e;liberal divinity schools"e; and that serious religious dialogue in the Muslim world requires dramatic political reforms. Other respondents argue that theological debates are irrelevant and that our focus should be on Western sabotage of such reforms. Still others argue that calls for Islamic "e;tolerance"e; betray the Qur'anic injunction for Muslims to struggle against their oppressors.The debate underscores an enduring challenge posed by religious morality in a pluralistic age: how can we preserve deep religious conviction while participating in what Abou El Fadl calls "e;a collective enterprise of goodness"e; that cuts across confessional differences?With contributions from Tariq Ali, Milton Viorst, and John Esposito, and others.

An inspiring story of doctors who changed the health care of an African nationDr. Dilan Ellegala arrives in Tanzania, shocked to find the entire country has just three brain surgeons for its population of forty-two million. Haydom Lutheran Hospital lacks even the most basic surgical tools, not even a saw to open a patient's skull. Here, people with head injuries or brain tumors heal on their own or die. When confronted with a villager suffering from a severe head trauma, Dilan buys a tree saw from a farmer, sterilizes it, and then uses it to save the man's life.Yet Dilan realizes that there are far too many neurosurgery patients for one person to save, and of course he will soon be leaving Tanzania. He needs to teach someone his skills. He identifies a potential student in Emmanuel Mayegga, a stubborn assistant medical officer who grew up in a mud hut. Though Mayegga has no medical degree, Dilan sees that Mayegga has the dexterity, intelligence, and determination to do brain surgery. Over six months, he teaches Mayegga how to remove tumors and treat hydrocephalus. And then, perhaps more important, Dilan teaches Mayegga how to pass on his newfound skills. Mayegga teaches a second Tanzanian, who teaches a third. It's a case of teach-a-man-to-fish meets brain surgery.As he guides these Tanzanians to do things they never thought possible, Dilan challenges the Western medical establishment to do more than send vacationing doctors on short-term medical missions. He discovers solutions that could transform health care for two billion people across the world.A Surgeon in the Village is the incredible and riveting account of one man's push to ';train-forward'to change our approach to aid and medical training before more lives are needlessly lost. His story is a testament to the transformational power of teaching and the ever-present potential for change. As many as seventeen million people die every year because of a shortage of surgeons, more than die from AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. Dilan Ellegala and other visionaries are boldly proposing ways of saving lives.

How the hidden trade in our sensitive medical information became a multibillion-dollar business, but has done little to improve our health-care outcomesHidden to consumers, patient medical data has become a multibillion-dollar worldwide trade industry between our health-care providers, drug companies, and a complex web of middlemen. This great medical-data bazaar sells copies of the prescription you recently filled, your hospital records, insurance claims, blood-test results, and more, stripped of your name but possibly with identifiers such as year of birth, gender, and doctor. As computing grows ever more sophisticated, patient dossiers become increasingly vulnerable to reidentification and the possibility of being targeted by identity thieves or hackers.Paradoxically, comprehensive electronic files for patient treatmentthe reason medical data exists in the first placeremain an elusive goal. Even today, patients or their doctors rarely have easy access to comprehensive records that could improve care. In the evolution of medical data, the instinct for profit has outstripped patient needs. This book tells the human, behind-the-scenes story of how such a system evolved internationally.It begins with New York advertising man Ludwig Wolfgang Frohlich, who founded IMS Health, the world's dominant health-data miner, in the 1950s. IMS Health now gathers patient medical data from more than 45 billion transactions annually from 780,000 data feeds in more than 100 countries. Our Bodies, Our Data uncovers some of Frohlich's hidden past and follows the story of what happened in the following decades. This is both a story about medicine and medical practice, and about big business and maximizing profits, and the places these meet, places most patients would like to believe are off-limits.Our Bodies, Our Data seeks to spark debate on how we can best balance the promise big data offers to advance medicine and improve lives while preserving the rights and interests of every patient. We, the public, deserve a say in this discussion. After all, it's our data.

Overturns common misconceptions about charter schools, school "choice," standardized tests, common core curriculum, and teacher evaluations.Three distinguished educators, scholars, and activists flip the script on many enduring and popular myths about teachers, teachers' unions, and education that permeate our culture. By unpacking these myths, and underscoring the necessity of strong and vital public schools as a common good, the authors challenge readers--whether parents, community members, policy makers, union activists, or educators themselves--to rethink their assumptions.