Penguin Books and University Press Books

Invite You to an Author Event with

George Lakoff, author of

Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain

Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 5:30-7:00

In What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why. As it turns out, human beings are not the rational creatures we’ve so long imagined ourselves to be. Ideas, morals, and values do not exist somewhere outside the body, ready to be examined and put to use. Instead, they exist quite literally inside the brain—and they take physical shape there. For example, we form particular kinds of narratives in our minds just like we form specific muscle memories such as typing or dancing, and then we fit new information into those narratives. Getting that information out of one narrative type and into another—or building a whole new narrative altogether—can be as hard as learning to play the banjo. Changing your mind isn’t like changing your body—it’s the same thing. But as long as progressive politicians and activists persist in believing that people use an objective system of reasoning to decide on their politics, the Democrats will continue to lose elections. They must wrest control of the terms of the debate from their opponents rather than accepting their frame and trying to argue within it. This passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book will appeal to readers of Steven Pinker and Thomas Frank. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.

"Lakoff (Don't Think of an Elephant) harnesses cognitive science to rally progressive politicians and voters by positing that conservatives have framed the debate on vital issues more effectively than liberals. According to his research, conservatives comprehend that most brain functioning is grounded not in logical reasoning but in emotionalism — as a result, huge portions of the citizenry accept the Republican framing of the 'war in Iraq' and 'supporting the troops' rather than liberal appeals and phrasing of 'the occupation in Iraq' and 'squandering tax money.' George W. Bush won the presidency by concocting a 'redemption narrative,' persuading tens of millions of voters that his past moral and business shortcomings should be viewed as a prelude to pulling himself up, rather than as disqualifying behavior. While sections of the book employ technical scientific terminology, the author masterfully makes his research comprehensible to nonspecialists. His conclusion — that if citizens and policy-makers better understand brain functioning, hope exists to ameliorate global warming and other societal disasters in the making — will be of vital importance and interest to all readers. (June)" Publishers Weekly

"Smart and provocative-essential reading for political activists and policy wonks of any stripe." Kirkus Reviews

George Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Rockridge Institute, a think tank in Berkeley. He is author of Don't Think of an Elephant!, Moral Politics, Whose Freedom?, and coauthor of Thinking Points: A Progressive's Handbook, as well as many books and articles on cognitive science and linguistics.

 

Temple University Press

and University Press Books

Invite you to join in a conversation with

Samuel Lucas, Professor of Sociology at

UC Berkeley , author of

Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice

With Interlocutor Aarti Shah

Thursday, September 4, 2008, 5:30-7:00

Despite several decades of attention, there is still no consensus on the effects of racial or sexual discrimination in the United States. In this landmark work, the well-known sociologist Samuel Lucas shows how discrimination is not simply an action that one person performs in relation to another individual, but something far more insidious: a pervasive dynamic that permeates the environment in which we live and work. Challenging existing literature on the subject, Lucas makes a clear distinction between prejudice and discrimination. He maintains that when an era of “condoned exploitation” ended, the era of “contested prejudice,” as he terms it, began. He argues that the great strides made in the 1950s and 1960s repudiated prejudice, but not discrimination. Drawing on critical race theory, feminist theory, and a critique of dominant perspectives in the social sciences and law, Lucas offers a new understanding of racial and sexual discrimination that can guide our actions and laws into a more just future.

"Brilliant and fascinating...one of the smartest social science books, I can recall reading."
—Barbara Reskin, University of Washington

"An erudite, confident, clearly written and valuable contribution to an important subject."
—John Skrentny, University of California, San Diego

Samuel Roundfield Lucas is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Tracking Inequality: Stratification and Mobility in American High Schools and a co-author of Inequality By Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth.

Aarti Shah is Bay Area bureau chief for PRWeek, and primarily covers technology. She is also the editor of PRWeek's Target Green blog that focuses on green messaging.

 

Ashgate Press and University Press Books

Invite you to an author event with

Jacqueline Fulmer, author of

Folk Women and Indirection in Morrison, Ni Dhuibhne, Hurston and Lavin

Tuesday, September 9, 2008, 5:30-7:00

Fulmer (University of California, Berkeley) finds remarkable links between African American and Irish women writers, tracing an intellectual genealogical line from Lavin to Ni Dhuibhne and from Hurston to Morrison, showing how they attained free expression through the indirection that was long a tool of folk lore to deflect controversy. She examines such issues as the ways of folk women against authority and the parallel methods of women faced with censorship and condescension, the use of "otherworld" women in commentary on sex and religion, and the particular place and responsibilities of the wise woman.

'Few critics have attempted to read African-American women writers alongside their Irish counterparts. Jackie Fulmer's enlightening study pioneers a rich field and belongs among the most innovative Irish feminist work, drawing new impetus from folklore and comparative studies. This is interdisciplinary cultural studies of a very fine order indeed.'
David Lloyd, University of Southern California

'…a provocative and rewarding investigation into the rich crossings between Irish and African-American women writers that remains attentive to the key differences between these two traditions.'
Marc Conner, Washington & Lee University

'Fulmer insightfully analyzes the writings of four women writers, demonstrating that indirection becomes a most powerful literary principle precisely because of its prevalence in oral literature and culture.'
Dan Ben-Amos, University of Pennsylvania

Jacqueline Fulmer took her PhD in Rhetoric, with an emphasis in Oral Tradition Studies, from the University of California, Berkeley. Over the years she has taught rhetorical theory, Irish literature and culture, African-, Irish-, and Chinese-American literature, women's studies, American cultures studies, and folklore as part of courses taught for the departments of Rhetoric, Comparative Literature, Celtic Studies, and UC's Fall Freshman Program.

 

UC Press and University Press Books

Invite you to an author event wtih

Barbara Epstein, author of

The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism

Tuesday, September 16, 2008, 6:00-7:30

Drawing from engrossing survivors' accounts, many never before published, The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943 recounts a heroic yet little-known chapter in Holocaust history. In vivid and moving detail, Barbara Epstein chronicles the history of a Communist-led resistance movement inside the Minsk ghetto, which, through its links to its Belarussian counterpart outside the ghetto and with help from others, enabled thousands of ghetto Jews to flee to the surrounding forests where they joined partisan units fighting the Germans. Telling a story that stands in stark contrast to what transpired across much of Eastern Europe, where Jews found few reliable allies in the face of the Nazi threat, this book captures the texture of life inside and outside the Minsk ghetto, evoking the harsh conditions, the life-threatening situations, and the friendships that helped many escape almost certain death. Epstein also explores how and why this resistance movement, unlike better known movements at places like Warsaw, Vilna, and Kovno, was able to rely on collaboration with those outside ghetto walls. She finds that an internationalist ethos fostered by two decades of Soviet rule, in addition to other factors, made this extraordinary story possible.

"Barbara Epstein has written a revelatory book. Arduously and carefully, she brings to light and to life an aspect of the Holocaust in Belorussia that we did not know, showing us that the victims were not only victims but also fighters. And so were a good many people who were not Jews, yet joined with them to resist Nazi brutality."—Frances Fox Piven, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America

"When historian Barbara Epstein traveled to Minsk to learn Yiddish, the language of her ancestors, she got more than she bargained for. An amazing, forgotten story emerged that ran against the grain of almost all accounts of the Holocaust. The Minsk Ghetto is an invaluable, and deeply moving addition to Holocaust and World War II history."—Richard Walker, author of The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area

"This richly researched, beautifully written account of one of the most important instances of inter-ethnic solidarity and resistance in face of the Holocaust packs an analytic punch as powerful as its emotional one."—Leo Panitch, author of Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy and Imagination

Barbara Epstein is Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the Seventies and Eighties (UC Press) among other books.

 

University of Chicago Press and

University Press Books

Invite you to an author event with

Unni Wikan, University of Oslo, author of

In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame

Thursday, September 18, 2008, 6:00-7:30

In 2002 young Fadime Sahindal was brutally murdered by her own father. She belonged to a family of Kurdish immigrants who had lived in Sweden for almost two decades. But Fadime’s relationship with a man outside of their community had deeply dishonored her family, and only her death could remove the stain. This abhorrent crime shocked the world, and her name soon became a rallying cry in the struggle to combat so-called honor killings. 

Unni Wikan narrates Fadime’s heartbreaking story through her own eloquent words, along with the testimonies of her father, mother, and two sisters. What unfolds is a tale of courage and betrayal, loyalty and love, power and humiliation, and a nearly unfathomable clash of cultures. Despite enduring years of threats over her emancipated life, Fadime advocated compassion for her killers to the end, believing them to be trapped by an unyielding code of honor. Wikan puts this shocking event in context by analyzing similar honor killings, which are increasing throughout Europe and have now been reported in Canada and the United States. She also examines the concept of honor in historical and cross-cultural depth, concluding that Islam itself is not to blame—indeed, honor killings occur across religious and ethnic traditions—but rather the way that many cultures have resolutely linked honor with violence.

In Honor of Fadime holds profound and timely insights into Islamic culture, but ultimately the heart of this powerful book is Fadime’s courageous and tragic story—and Wikan’s telling of it is riveting.

Unni Wikan is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, and is the author of nine books. Her most recent work in English is Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe, also published by the University of Chicago Press.