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The Armenian Inscriptions from the Sinai
Michael Stone
Harvard University Press, 1982

This is the first publication of inscriptions left in the Sinai desert by medieval Armenian and Georgian pilgrims to the Holy Land. The book contains the evidence discovered in 1979 and 1980 on the routes leading to Mount Sinai (Uebel Musa) from East and West.

The Armenian and Georgian inscriptions, which date from the seventh to later than the fifteenth century, are of prime importance for historical and paleographical studies. This edition gives original photographs of the inscriptions, transcriptions with transliteration and English translation, and elaborate notes on the paleography. The Introduction deals in a fully comparative manner with the epigraphic evidence, and studies the itineraries of the pilgrims through the Sinai peninsula.

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front cover of Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora
Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora
Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana
By Norma Iglesias Prieto
University of Texas Press, 1997

Published originally as La flor mas bella de la maquiladora, this beautifully written book is based on interviews the author conducted with more than fifty Mexican women who work in the assembly plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. A descriptive analytic study conducted in the late 1970s, the book uses compelling testimonials to detail the struggles these women face.

The experiences of women in maquiladoras are attracting increasing attention from scholars, especially in the context of ongoing Mexican migration to the country's northern frontier and in light of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This book is among the earliest accounts of the physical and psychological toll exacted from the women who labor in these plants. Iglesias Prieto captures the idioms of these working women so that they emerge as dynamic individuals, young and articulate personalities, inexorably engaged in the daily struggle to change the fundamental conditions of their exploitation.

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A Right to Housing
Foundation for a New Social Agenda
Rachel Bratt
Temple University Press, 2006
In the 1949 Housing Act, Congress declared "a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family" our national housing goal. Today, little more than half a century later, upwards of 100 million people in the United States live in housing that is physically inadequate, unsafe, overcrowded, or unaffordable.

The contributors to A Right to Housing consider the key issues related to America's housing crisis, including income inequality and insecurity, segregation and discrimination, the rights of the elderly, as well as legislative and judicial responses to homelessness. The book offers a detailed examination of how access to adequate housing is directly related to economic security.

With essays by leading activists and scholars, this book presents a powerful and compelling analysis of the persistent inability of the U.S. to meet many of its citizens' housing needs, and a comprehensive proposal for progressive change.
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Shelter Poverty
New Ideas on Housing Affordability
Michael E. Stone
Temple University Press, 1993
"...the most original--and profoundly disturbing--work on the critical issue of housing affordability...." --Chester Hartman, President, Poverty and Race Research Action Council In Shelter Poverty, Michael E. Stone presents the definitive discussion of housing and social justice in the United States. Challenging the conventional definition of housing affordability, Stone offers original and powerful insights about the nature, causes, and consequences of the affordability problem and presents creative and detailed proposals for solving a problem that afflicts one-third of this nation. Setting the housing crisis into broad political, economic, and historical contexts, Stone asks: What is shelter poverty? Why does it exist and persist? and How can it be overcome? Describing shelter poverty as the denial of a universal human need, Stone offers a quantitative scale by which to measure it and reflects on the social and economic implications of housing affordability in this country. He argues for "the right to housing" and presents a program for transforming a large proportion of the housing in this country from an expensive commodity into an affordable social entitlement. Employing new concepts of housing ownership, tenure, and finance, he favors social ownership in which market concepts have a useful but subordinate role in the identification of housing preferences and allocation. Stone concludes that political action around shelter poverty will further the goal of achieving a truly just and democratic society that is also equitably and responsibly productive and prosperous.
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