An Ordinary Country

Author : Neville Alexander
Publisher : University of Kwazulu Natal Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Ordinary Country written by Neville Alexander and published by University of Kwazulu Natal Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa disputes the notion of a "miracle" transition in this country. It argues that the new South Africa had to happen in the way it did because of the specific history of the country and the players involved. While it identifies some of the turning points at which critical choices were made by local and international forces, it shows why, in retrospect, the known decisions were made rather than other possible ones. Alexander explores a range of issues in post-apartheid South Africa including national identity and the rainbow nation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the role and status of language, showing the volatility, the tentativeness, and the fluidity of the situation that is evolving. In looking ahead at probable developments, An Ordinary Country predicts that South Africa will develop, or stagnate, as a "normal" bourgeois democratic social formation for the next generation, at least until the inevitable alternatives to the prevailing system of political economy regain their credibility.

Author : Richard Rosecrance
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501743120
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book America as an Ordinary Country written by Richard Rosecrance and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the possibilities for peace are to be increased in the next generation, America should change its role in world affairs from dominant superpower to ordinary country. That is the conclusion reached by ten distinguished specialists, five of them writing from abroad, as they reflect on recent U.S. foreign policy and survey its prospects. Ranging over crucial issues in military affairs, in the political sphere, and in the field of economics, their essays point out errors and misjudgments of the past and offer realistic, thought-provoking recommendations for the future.

Author : Marc Stears
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674743873
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Out of the Ordinary written by Marc Stears and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a major British political thinker and activist, a passionate case that both the left and right have lost their faith in ordinary people and must learn to find it again. This is an age of polarization. It’s us vs. them. The battle lines are clear, and compromise is surrender. As Out of the Ordinary reminds us, we have been here before. From the 1920s to the 1950s, in a world transformed by revolution and war, extreme ideologies of left and right fueled utopian hopes and dystopian fears. In response, Marc Stears writes, a group of British writers, artists, photographers, and filmmakers showed a way out. These men and women, including J. B. Priestley, George Orwell, Barbara Jones, Dylan Thomas, Laurie Lee, and Bill Brandt, had no formal connection to one another. But they each worked to forge a politics that resisted the empty idealisms and totalizing abstractions of their time. Instead they were convinced that people going about their daily lives possess all the insight, virtue, and determination required to build a good society. In poems, novels, essays, films, paintings, and photographs, they gave witness to everyday people’s ability to overcome the supposedly insoluble contradictions between tradition and progress, patriotism and diversity, rights and duties, nationalism and internationalism, conservatism and radicalism. It was this humble vision that animated the great Festival of Britain in 1951 and put everyday citizens at the heart of a new vision of national regeneration. A leading political theorist and a veteran of British politics, Stears writes with unusual passion and clarity about the achievements of these apostles of the ordinary. They helped Britain through an age of crisis. Their ideas might do so again, in the United Kingdom and beyond.

Author : Ziad Fahmy
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804772126
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ordinary Egyptians written by Ziad Fahmy and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how popular media and culture provided ordinary Egyptians with a framework to construct and negotiate a modern national identity.

Author : Antjie Krog
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307420507
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Country of My Skull written by Antjie Krog and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was reunited. The dreaded and dangerous security force, which for years had systematically tortured, spied upon, and harassed people of color and their white supporters, was dismantled. But how could this country--one of spectacular beauty and promise--come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom the oppressive white government had pitted against one another, live side by side as friends and neighbors? To begin the healing process, Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by the renowned cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Established in 1995, the commission faced the awesome task of hearing the testimony of the victims of apartheid as well as the oppressors. Amnesty was granted to those who offered a full confession of any crimes associated with apartheid. Since the commission began its work, it has been the central player in a drama that has riveted the country. In this book, Antjie Krog, a South African journalist and poet who has covered the work of the commission, recounts the drama, the horrors, the wrenching personal stories of the victims and their families. Through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, from the appearance of Winnie Mandela to former South African president P. W. Botha's extraordinary courthouse press conference, this award-winning poet leads us on an amazing journey. Country of My Skull captures the complexity of the Truth Commission's work. The narrative is often traumatic, vivid, and provocative. Krog's powerful prose lures the reader actively and inventively through a mosaic of insights, impressions, and secret themes. This compelling tale is Antjie Krog's profound literary account of the mending of a country that was in colossal need of change.

Author : Logan Mehl-Laituri
Publisher : MennoMedia, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 0836198905
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book For God and Country (in that order) written by Logan Mehl-Laituri and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The call to arms often thrusts devoted Christians into a dilemma: They want to be responsible citizens who obey the government and love their country. And yet they worship a God who loves all people, including enemies. Throughout history, Christians have responded in various ways-some renouncing violence and military participation, others seeking military service in a godly way. Both politically relevant and theologically provocative, this field manual seeks to recapture the hearts and minds of Christians trapped between conflicting loyalties to faith and citizenship. Filled with compelling stories and photos, Iraq war veteran Logan Mehl-Laituri creates an almanac of soldier saints and patriot pacifists from the front lines of church history.

Author : Gene Weingarten
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0399185836
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book One Day written by Gene Weingarten and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years”—Slate On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day—chosen completely at random—turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, prejudice, selflessness, coincidence, and startling moments of human connection, along with evocative foreshadowing of momentous events yet to come. Lives were lost. Lives were saved. Lives were altered in overwhelming ways. Many of these events never made it into the news; they were private dramas in the lives of private people. They were utterly compelling. One Day asks and answers the question of whether there is even such a thing as “ordinary” when we are talking about how we all lurch and stumble our way through the daily, daunting challenge of being human.

Author : Abraham Verghese
Publisher : BookRags
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 42 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book My Own Country written by Abraham Verghese and published by BookRags. This book was released on 1998 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Christian Welzel
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198732287
Total Pages : 515 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Democratization written by Christian Welzel and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratization is the most comprehensive volume on this critical field of contemporary politics, with insightful coverage of the key theories, actors, dynamics, and developments. This authoritative guide brings together leading experts from diverse international backgrounds, including some of the best known names in the field, making it an invaluable resource to students of democratization. This second edition reflects the dramatic changes in today's political world, with empirical coverage of developments on every continent. It considers the role of new technologies, including a dedicated chapter on social media and democratization, as well as the resilience of authoritarian tendencies in many parts of the world. The book is accompanied by a range of online resources designed to support both students and lecturers. For students: - Revise key terms and test your knowledge of terminology from the book with our digital flashcard glossary. - Expand your knowledge of key developments in world affairs with additional case studies. - Take your learning further with links to reliable web content and relevant OUP journals. For registered adopters of the textbook: - Guide class debate with suggested seminar questions and activities. - Adapt PowerPoint(R) slides as a basis for lecture presentations, or use as handouts in class.

Author : W.G. Sebald
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0812995031
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Place in the Country written by W.G. Sebald and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Place in the Country is W. G. Sebald’s meditation on the six artists and writers who shaped his creative mind—and the last of this great writer’s major works to be translated into English. This edition includes more than 40 pieces of art, all originally selected by W. G. Sebald. This extraordinary collection of interlinked essays about place, memory, and creativity captures the inner worlds of five authors and one painter. In his masterly and mysterious style—part critical essay, part memoir—Sebald weaves their lives and art with his own migrations and rise in the literary world. Here are people gifted with talent and courage yet in some cases cursed by fragile and unstable natures, working in countries inhospitable or even hostile to them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is conjured on the verge of physical and mental exhaustion, hiding from his detractors on the island of St. Pierre, where two centuries later Sebald took rooms adjacent to his. Eighteenth-century author Johann Peter Hebel is remembered for his exquisite and delicate nature writing, expressing the eternal balance of both the outside world and human emotions. Writer Gottfried Keller, best known for his 1850 novel Green Henry, is praised for his prescient insights into a Germany where “the gap between self-interest and the common good was growing ever wider.” Sebald compassionately re-creates the ordeals of Eduard Mörike, the nineteenth-century German poet beset by mood swings, depression, and fainting spells in an increasingly shallow society, and Robert Walser, the institutionalized author whose nearly indecipherable scrawls seemed an attempt to “duck down below the level of language and obliterate himself” (and whose physical appearance and year of death mirrored those of Sebald’s grandfather). Finally, Sebald spies a cognizance of death’s inevitability in painter Jan Peter Tripp’s lovingly exact reproductions of life. Featuring the same kinds of suggestive and unexplained illustrations that appear in his masterworks Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, and translated by Sebald’s colleague Jo Catling, A Place in the Country is Sebald’s unforgettable self-portrait as seen through the experiences of others, a glimpse of his own ghosts alongside those of the men who influenced him. It is an essential addition to his stunning body of work. Praise for A Place in the Country “Measured, solemn, sardonic . . . hypnotic . . . [W. G. Sebald’s] books, which he made out of classics, remain classics for now.”—Joshua Cohen, The New York Times Book Review “In Sebald’s writing, everything is connected, everything webbed together by the unseen threads of history, or chance, or fate, or death. The scholarly craft of gathering scattered sources and weaving them into a coherent whole is transformed here into something beautiful and unsettling, elevated into an art of the uncanny—an art that was, in the end, Sebald’s strange and inscrutable gift.”—Slate “Magnificent . . . The multiple layers surrounding each essay are seamless to the point of imperceptibility.”—New York Daily News “Sebald’s most tender and jovial book.”—The Nation “Reading [A Place in the Country is] like going for a walk with a beautifully talented, deeply passionate novelist from Mars.”—New York