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Jallad
Death Squads and State Terror in South Asia
Tasneem Khalil
Pluto Press, 2015
Throughout South Asia, people live in fear of death squads, from the Rapid Action Battalion of Bangladesh to the “encounter specialists” of India, army units in Nepal, the Frontier Corps of Pakistan, and the “men in white vans” of Sri Lanka. Their tools are disappearance, torture, and summary execution, and their supporters, Tasneem Khalil shows in Jallad, are the governments of these nations—and their patrons, like the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Israel.
 
An unsparing indictment of an international system of terror that is fully countenanced by the West, Jallad presents close-up, detailed accounts of incidents of state terror and targeted violence throughout South Asia. Khalil, a reporter who himself endured torture at the hands of agents in Bangladesh, and whose remarkable story was featured in the New York Times, draws on countless hours of on-the-ground reporting and a broad network of activists and human rights advocates to build an undeniable portrait of the domination and repression that lies at the very core of statecraft in South Asia. Shielded by their protectors in the developed world, the perpetrators of these abuses deploy them strategically to silence dissent and crush opposition.
 
A brave, essential work of reporting and investigation, Jallad brings these horrific acts to prominence in order to make it impossible for Western governments to continue turning a blind eye to the human rights violations of their erstwhile allies.
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Jane Austen
Writer in the World
Edited by Kathryn Sutherland
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2017
The life of Jane Austen has fascinated the millions of readers around the world who cherish her work. A new collection presents an intimate portrait of Austen through her personal possessions, showing the many details of her life that found echoes in her fiction, especially her keen observations of the “little matters”—the routines of reading, dining and taking tea, paying visits to family and friends, and walking to the shops or to send the post.
           
Brilliantly edited by Kathryn Sutherland, Jane Austen: Writer in the World offers a life story told through the author's personal possessions. In her teenage notebooks, literary jokes give a glimpse of her family’s shared love of reading and satire, which can be seen in the subtler humor of Austen’s published work. Pieces from Austen’s hand-copied collection of sheet music reveal how music was used to create networks far more intricate than the simple pleasures of home recital. A beautiful brown silk pelisse-coat, together with lively letters between Austen and Cassandra, give insight into her views on fashion. All feature in this lavishly illustrated collection, along with homemade booklets in which she composed her novels, portraits made of Austen during her lifetime, and much more. Also included are objects associated with the era in which Austen lived: newspaper articles, naval logbooks, and contemporary political cartoons, shedding light on Austen’s wider social and political worlds.
           
This collection makes a delightful modern-day keepsake from one of the world’s best-loved writers on the two-hundredth anniversary of her death.
 
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Japan in the American Century
Kenneth B. Pyle
Harvard University Press, 2018

No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order.

The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions.

Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.

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Japan in the World
Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian, eds.
Duke University Press, 1993
Since the end of World War II, Japan has determinately remained outside the current of world events and uninvolved in the processes determining global history and politics. In Japan and the World, distinguished scholars, novelists, and intellectuals articulate how Japan—despite unprecedented economic prowess in securing dominance in the world's market—is caught in a complex dependency with the United States. Drawing on critical and postmodernist theory, this timely volume situates this dependency in a broader historical context and assesses Japan's current dealings in international politics, society, and culture.
Among the many topics covered are: racism in U.S.-Japanese relations; productivity and workplace discourse; Western cultural hegemony; the constructing of a Japanese cultural history; and the place of the novelist in today's world. Originally published as a special issue of boundary 2 (Fall 1991), this edition includes four new essays on Japanese industrial revolution; the place of English studies in Japan; how American cultural, historical, and political discourse represented Japan and in turn how America's version of Japan became Japan's version of itself; and an "archaeology" of hegemonic relationships between Japan and America and Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.

Contributors. Eqbal Ahmad, Perry Anderson, Bruce Cumings, Arif Dirlik, H.D. Harootunian, Kazuo Ishuro, Fredric Jameson, Kojin Karatani, Oe Kenzaburo, Masao Miyoshi, Tetsuo Najita, Leslie Pincus, Naoki Sakai, Miriam Silverberg, Christena Turner, Rob Wilson, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto
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Japan in the World, the World in Japan
Fifty Years of Japanese Studies at Michigan
Edited by the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan
University of Michigan Press, 2001
In fall 1997 the Center for Japanese Studies at The University of Michigan celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The November symposium featured more than fifty speakers, moderators, and musicians who celebrated the occasion and offered reminiscences on the Center's multifaceted scholarly and professional missions, discussions of the accomplishments of its al-umni/ae, and perspectives on wartime and postwar Japan-U.S. relations. As the first American interdisciplinary institute devoted to education and research on Japan, The University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies has a path-making legacy. This volume, which includes the public presentations from the November 1997 symposium, reflects that legacy and the university's long and continuing involvement in Asia, which dates back to the 1870s.
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Japan Rearmed
The Politics of Military Power
Sheila A. Smith
Harvard University Press, 2019

Japan’s U.S.imposed postwar constitution renounced the use of offensive military force, but, as Sheila Smith shows, a nuclear North Korea and an increasingly assertive China have the Japanese rethinking that commitment, and their reliance on United States security.

Japan has one of Asia’s most technologically advanced militaries and yet struggles to use its hard power as an instrument of national policy. The horrors of World War II continue to haunt policymakers in Tokyo, while China and South Korea remain wary of any military ambitions Japan may entertain. Yet a fundamental shift in East Asian geopolitics has forced Japan to rethink the commitment to pacifism it made during the U.S. occupation. It has increasingly flexed its muscles—deploying troops under UN auspices, participating in coercive sanctions, augmenting surveillance capabilities, and raising defense budgets.

Article Nine of Japan’s constitution, drafted by U.S. authorities in 1946, claims that the Japanese people “forever renounce the use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe broke this taboo by advocating revision of Article Nine, public outcry was surprisingly muted. The military, once feared as a security liability, now appears to be an indispensable asset, called upon with increasing frequency and given a seat at the policymaking table.

In Japan Rearmed Sheila Smith argues that Japan is not only responding to increasing threats from North Korean missiles and Chinese maritime activities but also reevaluating its dependence on the United States. No longer convinced that they can rely on Americans to defend Japan, Tokyo’s political leaders are now confronting the possibility that they may need to prepare the nation’s military for war.

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Japan Rearmed
The Politics of Military Power
Sheila A. Smith
Harvard University Press

“Washington’s relationship with Tokyo is generally considered the most important of the United States’ 70-odd alliances. In this intimately knowledgeable book, Smith shows how that alliance looks to the Japanese: increasingly unreliable.”—Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs

“Masterfully traces the interplay of Japan’s military heritage, politics, national sentiment, threats, and alliance with the United States in the formation and development of the Self-Defense Force. Even experts will find new information and insights.”—Admiral Dennis Blair, US Navy (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, US Pacific Command

“A must-read for US policymakers responsible for Asia.” —J. Thomas Schieffer, former US Ambassador to Japan

“A highly readable and richly detailed account of Japan’s rearmament and the politics surrounding it.”—Journal of American–East Asian Relations

Japan has one of Asia’s most technologically advanced militaries, yet it has struggled to use its hard power as an instrument of national policy. The horrors of World War II continue to haunt policymakers in Tokyo, but a fundamental shift in East Asian geopolitics has forced Japan to rethink its commitment to pacifism. Its military, once feared as a security liability, now appears to be an indispensable asset.

In Japan Rearmed, Sheila Smith argues that Japan is not only responding to threats from North Korean missiles and Chinese maritime activities, it is fundamentally reevaluating its dependence on the United States as its leaders confront the very real possibility that they may soon need to prepare for war.

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Japanese Empire in the Tropics
Selected Documents and Reports of the Japanese Period in Sarawak, Northwest Borneo, 1941–1945
Ooi Keat Gin
Ohio University Press, 1997

Although the Japanese interregnum was brief, its dramatic commencement and equally dramatic conclusion represented a watershed in the history of the young state of Sarawak.

In recent years, there has been a groundswell of interest in the war years, culminating in an attempt at reassessment of the Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia by Western and Japanese scholars as well as by those from Southeast Asia.

Presented here in a two-volume edition is a history of the Japanese occupation of Sarawak narrated through the compelling testimonies of the actual participants based on their recollections, memoirs, and correspondence.

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Japanese Foreign Intelligence and Grand Strategy
From the Cold War to the Abe Era
Brad Williams
Georgetown University Press, 2023

Incisive insights into the distinctive nature of Japanese foreign intelligence and grand strategy, its underlying norms, and how they have changed over time

Japanese foreign intelligence is an outlier in many ways. Unlike many states, Japan does not possess a centralized foreign intelligence agency that dispatches agents abroad to engage in espionage. Japan is also notable for civilian control over key capabilities in human and signals intelligence. Japanese Foreign Intelligence and Grand Strategy probes the unique makeup of Japan's foreign intelligence institutions, practices, and capabilities across the economic, political, and military domains and shows how they have changed over time.

Brad Williams begins by exploring how Japan’s experiences of the Second World War and its new role as a major US ally influenced its adoption of bilateralism, developmentalism, technonationalism, and antimilitarism as key norms. As a result, Japanese intelligence-gathering resources centered primarily around improving its position in the global economy throughout the Cold War. Williams then brings his analysis up to the Abe Era, examining how shifts in the international, regional, and domestic policy environments in the twenty-first century have caused a gradual reassessment of national security strategy under former prime minister Shinzo Abe. As Japan reevaluates its old norms in light of regional security challenges, the book concludes by detailing how the country is beginning to rethink the size, shape, and purpose of its intelligence community.

Anyone interested in Japanese intelligence, security, or international relations will welcome this important contribution to our understanding of the country's intelligence capabilities and strategy.

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The Jerrie Mock Story
The First Woman to Fly Solo around the World
Nancy Roe Pimm
Ohio University Press, 2016

A Junior Library Guild selection
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Official 2016 Summer Reading List

In this biography for middle-grade readers, Nancy Roe Pimm tells the story of Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the world. In her trusty Cessna, The Spirit of Columbus—also known as Charlie—she traveled from Columbus, Ohio, on an eastward route that totaled nearly twenty-three thousand miles and took almost a month. Overcoming wind, ice, mechanical problems, and maybe even sabotage, Mock persevered.

Mock caught the aviation bug at seven years old, when she rode in a Ford Trimotor plane with her parents. In high school, she displayed a talent for math and science, and she was the only woman in her aeronautical engineering classes at Ohio State University. Although she then settled into domestic life, she never lost her interest in flying. What began as a joking suggestion from her husband to fly around the world prompted her to pursue her childhood dream. But the dream became a race, as another woman, Joan Merriam Smith, also sought to be the first to circle the globe.

Even though Mock beat Smith and accomplished what her heroine Amelia Earhart had died trying to do, her feat was overshadowed by the Vietnam War and other world events. Now, Pimm introduces Mock to a new generation of adventurers.

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Jew
Baker, Cynthia M
Rutgers University Press, 2017
Jew.  The word possesses an uncanny power to provoke and unsettle. For millennia, Jew has signified the consummate Other, a persistent fly in the ointment of Western civilization’s grand narratives and cultural projects. Only very recently, however, has Jew been reclaimed as a term of self-identification and pride.  
 
With these insights as a point of departure, this book offers a wide-ranging exploration of the key word Jew—a term that lies not only at the heart of Jewish experience, but indeed at the core of Western civilization. Examining scholarly debates about the origins and early meanings of Jew, Cynthia M. Baker interrogates categories like “ethnicity,” “race,” and “religion” that inevitably feature in attempts to define the word. Tracing the term’s evolution, she also illuminates its many contradictions, revealing how Jew has served as a marker of materialism and intellectualism, socialism and capitalism, worldly cosmopolitanism and clannish parochialism, chosen status, and accursed stigma.
 
Baker proceeds to explore the complex challenges that attend the modern appropriation of Jew as a term of self-identification, with forays into Yiddish language and culture, as well as meditations on Jew-as-identity by contemporary public intellectuals. Finally, by tracing the phrase new Jews through a range of contexts—including the early Zionist movement, current debates about Muslim immigration to Europe, and recent sociological studies in the United States—the book provides a glimpse of what the word Jew is coming to mean in an era of Internet cultures, genetic sequencing, precarious nationalisms, and proliferating identities.
 
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A Jewish Woman of Distinction
The Life and Diaries of Zinaida Poliakova
ChaeRan Y. Freeze
Brandeis University Press, 2019
Zinaida Poliakova (1863–1953) was the eldest daughter of Lazar Solomonovich Poliakov, one of the three brothers known as the Russian Rothschilds. They were moguls who dominated Russian finance and business and built almost a quarter of the railroad lines in Imperial Russia.
For more than seventy-five years, Poliakova kept detailed diaries of her world, giving us a rare look into the exclusive world of Jewish elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These rare documents reveal how Jews successfully integrated into Russian aristocratic society through their intimate friendships and patronage of the arts and philanthropy. And they did it all without converting—in fact, while staunchly demonstrating their Jewishness.

Poliakova’s life was marked by her dual identity as a Russian and a Jew. She cultivated aristocratic sensibilities and lived an extraordinarily lifestyle, and yet she was limited by the confessional laws of the empire and religious laws that governed her household. She brought her Russian tastes, habits, and sociability to France following her marriage to Reuben Gubbay (the grandson of Sir Albert Abdullah Sassoon). And she had to face the loss of almost all her family members and friends during the Holocaust.

Women’s voices are often lost in the sweep of history, and so A Jewish Women of Distinction is an exceptional, much-needed collection. These newly discovered primary sources will change the way we understand the full breadth of the Russian Jewish experience.
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Jihad and Islam in World War I
Studies on the Ottoman Jihad on the Centenary of Snouck Hurgronje's "Holy War Made in Germany"
Edited by Erik-Jan Zürcher
Leiden University Press, 2015
Today’s headlines are full of references to jihad and jihadists, but they’re nothing new: a century ago, the entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I was accompanied by a loud proclamation of jihad as well. This book resurrects that largely forgotten aspect of the war, investigating the background and nature of the proclamation, as well as its effects in the wider Middle East, the fears it stoked among German and British military leaders, and the accompanying academic debates about holy war and Islam.
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Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions
Paul E. Lovejoy
Ohio University Press, 2016

In Jihād in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions, a preeminent historian of Africa argues that scholars of the Americas and the Atlantic world have not given Africa its due consideration as part of either the Atlantic world or the age of revolutions. The book examines the jihād movement in the context of the age of revolutions—commonly associated with the American and French revolutions and the erosion of European imperialist powers—and shows how West Africa, too, experienced a period of profound political change in the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. Paul E. Lovejoy argues that West Africa was a vital actor in the Atlantic world and has wrongly been excluded from analyses of the period.

Among its chief contributions, the book reconceptualizes slavery. Lovejoy shows that during the decades in question, slavery expanded extensively not only in the southern United States, Cuba, and Brazil but also in the jihād states of West Africa. In particular, this expansion occurred in the Muslim states of the Sokoto Caliphate, Fuuta Jalon, and Fuuta Toro. At the same time, he offers new information on the role antislavery activity in West Africa played in the Atlantic slave trade and the African diaspora.

Finally, Jihād in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions provides unprecedented context for the political and cultural role of Islam in Africa—and of the concept of jihād in particular—from the eighteenth century into the present. Understanding that there is a long tradition of jihād in West Africa, Lovejoy argues, helps correct the current distortion in understanding the contemporary jihād movement in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Africa.

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Journal of the American Revolution 2019
Annual Volume
Don N. Hagist
Westholme Publishing, 2019
The Year’s Best Articles from the Leading On-Line Source of New Research on the American Revolution and Founding Eras
The Journal of the American Revolution, Annual Volume 2019, presents the journal’s best historical research and writing over the past calendar year. The volume is designed for institutions, scholars, and enthusiasts to provide a convenient overview of the latest research and scholarship in American Revolution and Founding Era studies. The thirty-eight articles in the 2019 edition include: 
Join, or Die: Political and Religious Controversy Over Franklin’s Snake Cartoon by Daniel P. Stone
The Connecticut Captivity of William Franklin, Loyalist by Louis Arthur Norton
Revisiting the Prayer at Valley Forge by Blake McGready
John the Painter: Terrorist for America by Lars Hedbor
Who Picked the Committees at the Constitutional Convention? by David O. Stewart
Norfolk, Virginia, Sacked by North Carolina and Virginia Troops by Patrick H. Hannum
Elias Hasket Derby: The Privateer Who Pioneered the Russian Trade by Nick Deluca
Benedict Arnold’s Master Plan (for British) Victory by John Knight
China and the American Revolution by Simon Hill
Moravians in the Middle: The Gnadenhutten Massacre by Eric Sterner
Slavery Through the Eyes of Revolutionary Generals by Gene Procknow
Our Man in Minorca: Lewis Littlepage, American Volunteer with the Spanish Armed Forces by Larrie D. Ferreiro
Patrick Tonyn: Britain’s Most Effective Revolutionary-Era Royal Governor by Jim Piecuch
Jefferson’s Reckoning: The Sage of Monticello’s Haunting Final Years by Geoff Smock
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Journal of the American Revolution 2020
Annual Volume
Don N. Hagist
Westholme Publishing, 2020
The Year’s Best Articles from the Leading On-Line Source of New Research on the American Revolution and Founding Eras
The Journal of the American Revolution, Annual Volume 2020, presents the journal’s best historical research and writing over the past calendar year. The volume is designed for institutions, scholars, and enthusiasts to provide a convenient overview of the latest research and scholarship in American Revolution and Founding Era studies. The thirty-six articles in the 2020 edition include: 
Bernard E. Griffiths: Trumpeter Barney of the Queen’s Rangers, Chelsea Pensioner—and Freed Slave by Todd W. Braisted
The Declaration of Independence: Did John Hancock Really Say that about his Signature?—and Other Signing Stories by J. L. Bell
Les Habitants: Collaboration and Pro-American Violence in Canada, 1774–1776 by Sebastian van Bastelaer
Misadventures in the Countryside: Escape from a British Prison Ship by Katie Turner Getty
The Revolutionary Memories of New York Loyalists: Thomas Jones and William Smith, Jr. by Cho-Chien Feng
The East India Company and Parliament’s “Fateful Decision” of 1767 by Steven Neill
Massachusetts Privateers During the Siege of Boston by Alexander Cain
The Constitution Counted Free Women and Children—And It Mattered by Andrew M. Schocket, with Kinzey M. McLaren-Czerr and Colin J. Spicer
How Magna Carta Influenced the American Revolution by Jason Yonce
Putting a Price on Loyalty: Mary Loring’s List of Losses by John Knight
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Journeys into the Mind of the World
A Book of Places
Richard Tillinghast
University of Tennessee Press, 2015

Renowned poet Richard Tillinghast’s wanderlust and restless spirit are nearly as well known as his verses. This book of essays captures that penchant to wander, yet Journeys into the Mind of the World is not merely a compilation of travel stories—it is a book of places. It explores these chosen locations—Ireland, England, India, the Middle East, Tennessee, Hawaii—in a deeper way than would be typical of travel literature, attempting to enter not just the world, but “the mind of the world”—the roots and history of places, their political and cultural history, spiritual, artistic, architectural, and ethnic dimensions.

Behind each essay is the presence, curiosity, and intelligence of the author himself, who uses his experience of the places he visits as a way of bringing the reader into the equation. Tillinghast illuminates his travels with a brilliant eye, a friendly soul, and eclectic knowledge of a variety of disparate areas—Civil War history, Venetian architecture, Asian cultures, Irish music, and the ways of out-of-the-way people. This attention to history and cultural embeddedness lends unique perspectives to each essay.

At the heart of his journeys are his deep roots in the South, tracing back to his hometown in Tennessee. The book explores not only Tillinghast’s childhood home in Memphis, but even the time before his birth when his mother lived in Paris. Readers will feel a sense of being everywhere at once, in a strange simultaneity, a time and place beyond any map or guidebook.

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Journeys into the Mind of the World
A Book of Places
Richard Tillinghast
University of Tennessee Press

Renowned poet Richard Tillinghast’s wanderlust and restless spirit are nearly as well known as his verses. This book of essays captures that penchant to wander, yet Journeys into the Mind of the World is not merely a compilation of travel stories—it is a book of places. It explores these chosen locations—Ireland, England, India, the Middle East, Tennessee, Hawaii—in a deeper way than would be typical of travel literature, attempting to enter not just the world, but “the mind of the world”—the roots and history of places, their political and cultural history, spiritual, artistic, architectural, and ethnic dimensions.

Behind each essay is the presence, curiosity, and intelligence of the author himself, who uses his experience of the places he visits as a way of bringing the reader into the equation. Tillinghast illuminates his travels with a brilliant eye, a friendly soul, and eclectic knowledge of a variety of disparate areas—Civil War history, Venetian architecture, Asian cultures, Irish music, and the ways of out-of-the-way people. This attention to history and cultural embeddedness lends unique perspectives to each essay.

At the heart of his journeys are his deep roots in the South, tracing back to his hometown in Tennessee. The book explores not only Tillinghast’s childhood home in Memphis, but even the time before his birth when his mother lived in Paris. Readers will feel a sense of being everywhere at once, in a strange simultaneity, a time and place beyond any map or
guidebook.

RICHARD TILLINGHAST is the author of three recent books of poetry: Sewanee Poems (Evergreen, 2009; second edition, 2012), Selected Poems (Dedalus, Dublin, 2009), and Wayfaring Stranger (Word Palace, 2012). Among his nonfiction books are Finding Ireland (University of Notre Dame, 2008) and An Armchair Traveller’s History of Istanbul (Haus Publishing, London, 2012).

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Journeys that Opened up the World
Women, Student Christian Movements, and Social Justice, 1955-1975
Evans, Sara M.
Rutgers University Press, 2003
This volume contains inspiring memoirs from sixteen women active in the civil rights movement, anti-war campaigns, and the rise of feminism in the Cold War era. It places religious activism at the center of social movements previously thought of as largely secular.

For thousands of young women in the 1950s and 1960s, involvement with the student Christian movement (SCM) changed their worldviews. Religious organizations fostered women’s leadership at a time when secular groups like Students for a Democratic Society, and the Left in general, relegated most female participants to stereotypical roles.

The SCM introduced young women to activism in other parts of the country and around the world. As leaders, thinkers, and organizers, they encountered the social realities of poverty and racial prejudice and worked to combat them. The SCM took women to Selma and Montgomery, to Africa and Latin America, and to a lifelong commitment to work for social justice.

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Judicial Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
Edited by Eduardo Zimmermann
University of London Press, 1999

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Judicial Review in Mexico
A Study of the Amparo Suit
By Richard D. Baker
University of Texas Press, 1971

The amparo suit is a Mexican legal institution similar in its effects to such Anglo-American procedures as habeas corpus, error, and the various forms of injunctive relief. It has undergone a long evolution since it was incorporated into the Constitution of 1857. Today, its principal purpose is to protect private individuals in the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed by the first twenty-nine articles of the Constitution.

Mexico after its independence produced many constitutions. One of the earliest problems was to find an adequate means of defending the Constitution against ill-founded interpretations of its precepts. Like the United States, Mexico has developed a system of constitutional defense in which the judiciary is the supreme interpreter of what this document means. Unlike the United States Supreme Court, however, the Mexican Supreme Court has not been innovative in its decisions or contradicted the administration on major policy decisions. This difference must be attributed to the civil law system of Mexico as well as to the political climate.

The first part of Richard D. Baker’s book describes the historical background of amparo and other methods of constitutional defense in Mexico. The three men most closely associated with creating a judicial form of constitutional defense in Mexico were Manuel Crescencio Rejón, José Fernando Ramírez, and Mariano Otero. Their own writings indicate that the immediate source of amparo must be found in the American institution of judicial review that was transmitted to Mexicans through Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

The second part is an exposition of the workings of the amparo suit in the twentieth century and the constitutional and statutory provisions affecting it. Since 1857, when it was incorporated into article 102 of the Constitution, the amparo suit has evolved into a highly complex institution performing three functions: the defense of the civil liberties enumerated in the first twenty-nine articles of the Constitution, the determination of the constitutionality of federal and state legislation, and cassation. The Supreme Court is primarily limited to defending civil liberties through the amparo suit; it remains less innovative and more restricted than the United States system of judicial review, especially in the effect of its judgments on political agencies.

Baker’s study is the first one in English dealing with this subject and is one of the most extensive in any language. It should be welcome as a valuable tool to all students of Mexican law, history, and political thought.

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Just One Vote
From Jim Walding's Nomination to Constitutional Defeat
Ian Stewart
University of Manitoba Press, 2009
On January 12, 1986, Jim Walding was nominated as the New Democratic Party candidate for the Manitoba constituency of St. Vital. Although Walding had been an MLA for fifteen years, he had fallen out of favour with key elements in his party, and won the nomination by only a single vote. Walding went on, in turn, to bring down his own government by a single vote, marking the only time in the history of Canadian politics that a majority government was brought down from within. Combining data drawn from archives, interviews, and the media, Just One Vote is a vivid and exceptionally detailed study of the nomination process. Ian Stewart outlines the geographic, social, and political backdrop behind Walding’s contested party nomination, the unusual chain of events triggered by the contestation, including the fall of the Pawley government and the NDP’s defeat in the 1988 provincial election, and examines the fallout from these events on Manitobans and Canadians.
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Justice Interrupted
The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East
Elizabeth F. Thompson
Harvard University Press, 2013

The Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 were often portrayed in the media as a dawn of democracy in the region. But the revolutionaries were—and saw themselves as—heirs to a centuries-long struggle for just government and the rule of law, a struggle obstructed by local elites as well as the interventions of foreign powers. Elizabeth F. Thompson uncovers the deep roots of liberal constitutionalism in the Middle East through the remarkable stories of those who fought against poverty, tyranny, and foreign rule.

Fascinating, sometimes quixotic personalities come to light: Tanyus Shahin, the Lebanese blacksmith who founded a peasant republic in 1858; Halide Edib, the feminist novelist who played a prominent role in the 1908 Ottoman constitutional revolution; Ali Shariati, the history professor who helped ignite the 1979 Iranian Revolution; Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who rallied Egyptians to Tahrir Square in 2011, and many more. Their memoirs, speeches, and letters chart the complex lineage of political idealism, reform, and violence that informs today’s Middle East.

Often depicted as inherently anti-democratic, Islam was integral to egalitarian movements that sought to correct imbalances of power and wealth wrought by the modern global economy—and by global war. Motivated by a memory of betrayal at the hands of the Great Powers after World War I and in the Cold War, today’s progressives assert a local tradition of liberal constitutionalism that has often been stifled but never extinguished.

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