The
Anthropology of Globalization : A Reader (Blackwell Readers in Anthropology)
by Jonathan Xavier Inda (Editor), Renato Rosaldo (Editor)
(Paperback - November 2001)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Listed under World History
The
Power of Myth
by Joseph Campbell, et al
(Paperback -- July 1991)
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
by Geraldine Brooks
Listed under Islam
The
10 Lenses: Your Guide to Living & Working in a Multicultural World
by Mark A. Williams, et al
(Paperback -- October 31, 2001)
The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin, Greg Suriano (Editor)
Listed under Darwin
Fingerprints
of the Gods
by Graham Hancock, Santha Faiia (Photographer)
Paperback: 578 pages
Crown Pub; ISBN: 0517887290; Reissue edition (June 1996)
Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer
by David Winner
Listed under Dutch History
Our
America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago
by Lealan Jones, et al
This heartbreaking and inspiring book goes a long way toward fulfilling
the wish one of its authors, LeAlan Jones, makes in his epigraph: "You
must learn our America as we must learn your America, so that, maybe, someday,
we can become one." Based on hours and hours of taped interviews that Jones
and Lloyd Newman, two high school students, conducted for two National
Public Radio documentaries they prepared in 1993 and 1995, Our America
is a no-holds-barred look at the devastatingly poor Chicago neighborhood
in which they live. It's a world where elementary school students learn
about sex and drugs before they learn how to read, and where many boys
do not expect to live to be 20. You finish the book marveling not that
so many of those who people it are trapped, but wondering that anyone survives
at all. Amazon.com
Paperback: 208 pages
Washington Square Pr; ISBN: 0671004646; (May 1998)
Diffusion
of Innovations
by Everett M. Rogers (Preface)
Paperback: 519 pages
Free Press; ISBN: 0029266718; 4th edition (May 1995)
The
Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our
Freedom
by Philip K. Howard
Author Philip K. Howard returns with the same storytelling style and
supreme reasonableness that made his first book, The Death of Common Sense,
such a smash hit in 1995. He begins The Lost Art of Drawing the Line by
noting the damage predatory litigation has done to the communal fabric
of the United States: "Social relations in America, far from steadied by
law's sure hand, are a tangle of frayed legal nerves." He tells how seesaws
have started to vanish from playgrounds, how teachers are banned from touching
students, and how emergency-room staff are blocked from attending to patients
off hospital grounds--even if they can see them bleeding to death just
30 feet away. These aren't just speculations, a parade of hypothetical
horror stories--they are actual trends and events that Howard describes
and documents. The ability to weave dozens of anecdotes like these into
his narrative is one of Howard's great strengths, and it allows him to
make important points in entertaining ways.
Yet the book is much more than a collection of outrageous stories or
a mere broadside against the legal system--though the legal system does
come in for plenty of criticism. Instead, it's a meditation on the meaning
of freedom, why freedom cannot exist outside of authority, and why individuals
in positions of authority should have the ability to make decisions based
on sound judgment. There is a temptation to secure liberty by restricting
authority through the law, but this can be overdone, and it carries a high
price: "Put law or any other formal construct in the middle of daily dealings,
and people will start looking to the law instead of to one another." Then
things get much worse: "The more our common institutions fail us, the more
Americans want to limit their authority. Through a downward cycle of distrust,
legal controls, [and] worse failure ... we drive Americans' governing institutions
further into the bureaucratic maw." That is a terrible place to be, where
no one is held accountable and antisocial behavior rules. And it has nothing
at all to do with freedom. --John J. Miller - Amazon.com
Paperback: Ballantine Books (Trd Pap); ISBN: 034543871X;
(January 29, 2002)
The
Dawn of Human Culture
by Richard G. Klein, Blake Edgar
(Hardcover -- March 29, 2002)
The
Clustered World : How We Live, What We Buy, and What It All Means About
Who We Are
by Michael J. Weiss
"Primary age group: 35-64... Median household income: $80,600...
Median home value: $247,000... Predominant ideology: moderate Republican...
Preferences: car phones, domestic wine, Land Rovers."
If this sounds like you, then you're a part of what's known as the "Winner's
Circle" cluster. If not, then you probably fall into one of 61 other lifestyle
clusters with names such as "Urban Gold Coast," "Pools & Patios," "God's
Country," "Golden Ponds," and "Shotguns & Pickups." In The Clustered
World, demographic detective Michael Weiss draws on the work of market
research firm Claritas and its PRIZM cluster system to render a richly
detailed view of the many neighborhoods and demographic segments that make
up the United States. According to Weiss, the image of America as a melting
pot is simply inaccurate--think salad bar, instead. He writes, "For a nation
that's always valued community, this breakup of the mass market into balkanized
population segments is as momentous as the collapse of Communism.... Today,
the country's new motto should be 'E pluribus pluriba': 'Out of many, many.'"
In addition to explaining the cluster concept, Weiss shows how marketers
can put clusters to work to understand consumers better and sell everything
from college educations to Dodge Caravans. Weiss also looks beyond the
U.S. population to lifestyle clusters in Canada, France, Germany, Great
Britain, South Africa, and Spain. Marketers and social observers will find
this pointillist view incredibly useful and perhaps a little disturbing.
The overriding truth behind The Clustered World is that, like it or not,
"You are like your neighbors." And in case you're wondering what cluster
you belong to, Weiss includes the URL for the Claritas Web site (yawyl.claritas.com),
where you can enter your ZIP code to find out more about you and your neighbors.
--Harry
C. Edwards - Amazon.com
Hardcover: 384 pages
Little Brown & Company; ISBN: 0316929204; 1st edition
(December 15, 2000)
Chinese
Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's
Republic of China
by Scott D. Seligman, Edward J. Trenn (Illustrator)
(Paperback -- March 1999)
The
Meme Machine
by Susan Blackmore
Forword by Richard Dawkins
In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposed the concept of
the meme as a unit of culture, spread by imitation. Now Dawkins himself
says of Susan Blackmore:
Showing greater courage and intellectual chutzpah than I have ever aspired
to, she deploys her memetic forces in a brave--do not think foolhardy until
you have read it--assault on the deepest questions of all: What is a self?
What am I? Where am I? ... Any theory deserves to be given its best shot,
and that is what Susan Blackmore has given the theory of the meme.
Blackmore is a parapsychologist who rejects the paranormal, a skeptical
investigator of near-death experiences, and a practitioner of Zen. Her
explanation of the science of the meme (memetics) is rigorously Darwinian.
Because she is a careful thinker (though by no means dull or conventional),
the reader ends up with a good idea of what memetics explains well and
what it doesn't, and with many ideas about how it can be tested--the very
hallmark of an excellent science book. Blackmore's discussion of the "memeplexes"
of religion and of the self are sure to be controversial, but she is (as
Dawkins says) enormously honest and brave to make a connection between
scientific ideas and how one should live one's life. --Mary Ellen Curtin
- Amazon.com
Paperback: 288 pages
Oxford University Press; ISBN: 019286212X; (May 2000)
Cultures
and Organizations
by Geert Hofstede
Paperback: 279 pages
McGraw-Hill Trade; ISBN: 0070293074; Revised edition
(October 1, 1996)
Lost
Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts
by Andrew Robinson
(Hardcover -- April 25, 2002)
The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in
the Golden Age
by Simon Schama
Listed under Dutch History
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