Black Boys Apart

Black Boys Apart
Author: Freeden Blume Oeur
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2018-08-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452957533

How neoliberalism and the politics of respectability are transforming African American manhood While single-sex public schools face much criticism, many Black communities see in them a great promise: that they can remedy a crisis for their young men. Black Boys Apart reveals triumphs, hope, and heartbreak at two all-male schools, a public high school and a charter high school, drawing on Freeden Blume Oeur’s ethnographic work. We meet young men who felt their schools empowered and emasculated them, parents who were frustrated with co-ed schools, teachers who helped pave the road to college, and administrators who saw in Black male academies the advantages of privatizing education. While the two schools have distinctive histories and ultimately charted different paths, they were both shaped by the convergence of neoliberal ideologies and a politics of Black respectability. As Blume Oeur reveals, all-boys education is less a school reform initiative and instead joins a legacy of efforts to reform Black manhood during periods of stark racial inequality. Black male academies join long-standing attempts to achieve racial uplift in Black communities, but in ways that elevate exceptional young men and aggravate divisions within those communities. Black Boys Apart shows all-boys schools to be an odd mix of democratic empowerment and market imperatives, racial segregation and intentional sex separation, strict discipline and loving care. Challenging narratives that endorse these schools for nurturing individual resilience in young Black men, this perceptive and penetrating ethnography argues for a holistic approach in which Black communities and their allies promote a collective resilience.

Marching Together

Marching Together
Author: Melinda Chateauvert
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1997
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780252066368

In this first book-length history of the women of the BSCP, Melinda Chateauvert brings to life an entire group of women ignored in previous histories of the Brotherhood and of working-class women, situating them in the debates among women's historians over the ways that race and class shape women's roles and gender relations. Chateauvert's work shows how the auxiliary, made up of the wives, daughters, and sisters of Pullman porters, used the Brotherhood to claim respectability and citizenship. Pullman maids, relegated to the auxiliary, found their problems as working women neglected in favor of the rhetoric of racial solidarity.

The Brotherhood

The Brotherhood
Author: Erick Stakelbeck
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-07-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1621570347

The Brotherhoods is the chilling chronicle of the alleged crimes and betrayals of NYPD Detectives Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, notorious rogue cops who stand charged with the ultimate form of police corruption-shielding their crimes behind their badges while they worked for the mob. These crimes included murder, kidnapping, torture, and the betrayal of an entire generation of New York City detectives and federal agents. This gripping real-life detective story reveals two brotherhoods, both with hierarchies, rituals, and codes of conduct. Chased for seven years by William Oldham, the brilliant and determined detective who didn't let the case die, Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito are at the centre of an investigation that moves from the mobbed-up streets of Brooklyn to Hollywood sets and the Las Vegas strip. Co-written with prize-winning investigative journalist Guy Lawson, the story spans three decades and showcases a cast of characters that runs the gamut from capo psychopaths to grieving mothers to a group of retired detectives and investigators working to see that justice is done.This quintessential American mob tale, both bizarre and compelling, ranks with such modern crime classics as Serpico, Donnie Brasco, and Wiseguy.

Brothers of a Vow

Brothers of a Vow
Author: Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820340472

In Brothers of a Vow, Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch examines secret fraternal organizations in antebellum Virginia to offer fresh insight into masculinity and the redefinition of social and political roles of white men in the South. Young Virginians who came of age during the antebellum era lived through a time of tremendous economic, cultural, and political upheaval. In a state increasingly pulled between the demands of the growing market and the long-established tradition of unfree labor, Pflugrad-Jackisch argues that groups like the Freemasons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Sons of Temperance promoted market-oriented values and created bonds among white men that softened class distinctions. At the same time, these groups sought to stabilize social hierarchies that subordinated blacks and women. Pflugrad-Jackisch examines all aspects of the secret orders--including their bylaws and proceedings, their material culture and regalia, and their participation in a wide array of festivals, parades, and civic celebrations. Regarding gender, she shows how fraternal orders helped reinforce an alternative definition of southern white manhood that emphasized self-discipline, moral character, temperance, and success at work. These groups ultimately established a civic brotherhood among white men that marginalized the role of women in the public sphere and bolstered the respectability of white men regardless of class status. Brothers of a Vow is a nuanced look at how dominant groups craft collective identities, and it adds to our understanding of citizenship and political culture during a period of rapid change.

The American Home Front, 1941-1942

The American Home Front, 1941-1942
Author: Alistair Cooke
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802143327

Alistair Cooke, a newly naturalized American citizen, shares his observations of American life in the year following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor.

No God but God

No God but God
Author: Geneive Abdo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2002-10-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0198029012

Shrouded in mystery, the Islamic presence in the Middle East evokes longstanding Western fears of terrorism and holy war. Our media have consistently focused on these extremes of Islam, overlooking a quiet yet pervasive religious movement that is now transforming the nation of Egypt. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, No God But God opens up previously inaccessible segments of Egyptian society--from the universities and professional sectors to the streets--to illustrate the deep penetration of "Popular Islamic" influence. Abdo provides a firsthand account of this peaceful movement, allowing its moderate leaders, street preachers, scholars, doctors, lawyers, men and women of all social classes to speak for themselves. Challenging Western stereotypes, she finds that this growing number of Islamists do not seek the violent overthrow of the government or a return to a medieval age. Instead, they believe their religious values are compatible with the demands of the modern world. They are working within and beyond the secular framework of the nation to gradually create a new society based on Islamic principles. Abdo narrates fascinating accounts of their methods and successes. Today, for example, university students meet in underground unions, despite a state ban. In addition, sheikhs have recently used their new legislative power to censor books and movies deemed to violate religious values. Both fascinating and unsettling, Abdo's findings identify a grassroots model for transforming a secular nation-state to an Islamic social order that will likely inspire other Muslim nations. This model cannot be ignored, for it will soon help organized Islamists to undermine secular control of Egypt and potentially jeopardize Western interests in the Arab world.

Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade

Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Author: Diana Gabaldon
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Total Pages: 575
Release: 2010-10-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385674015

From the exquisitely talented and award-winning author of the Outlander Saga come two additions to the oeuvre, both featuring Lord John Grey. This dashing character first appeared in Gabaldon’s blockbuster, Voyager, and readers cheered him on in the New York Times bestselling Lord John and the Private Matter. Diana Gabaldon takes readers back to eighteenth-century Britain as Lord John Grey pursues a deadly family secret as well as a clandestine love affair, set against the background of the Seven Years War. Seventeen years earlier, Grey’s father, the Duke of Pardloe, shot himself, days before he was to be accused of being a Jacobite traitor. By raising a regiment to fight at Culloden, Grey’s elder brother has succeeded in redeeming the family name, aided by Grey, now a major in that regiment. But now, on the eve of the regiment’s move to Germany, comes a mysterious threat that throws the matter of the Duke’s death into stark new question, and brings the Grey brothers into fresh conflict with the past and each other. From barracks and parade grounds to the battlefields of Prussia and the stony fells of the Lake District, Lord John’s struggle to find the truth leads him through danger and passion, ever deeper, toward the answer to the question at the centre of his soul–what is it that is most important to a man? Love, loyalty, family name? Self-respect, or honesty? Surviving both the battle of Krefeld and a searing personal betrayal, he returns to the Lake District to find the man who may hold the key to his quest: a Jacobite prisoner named Jamie Fraser. Here, Grey finds his truth and faces a final choice: between honour and life itself.

Between Religion and Politics

Between Religion and Politics
Author: Nathan J. Brown
Publisher: Carnegie Endowment
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2010-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0870032976

In recent decades, Islamist political movements in many Arab countries have strategically invested in a political process that was stacked heavily against them. And, to the surprise of many, they have actually succeeded by gaining more seats in parliaments and demonstrating their position as the only opposition movements with a popular base. Between Religion and Politics is a broad, cross-national study of Islamist parties in Arab parliamentary elections. The book focuses on those movements that have cast themselves, at least in part, as electorally oriented political parties. It probes the environment in which the movements operate, the checkered relationship between Islamists and national rulers, the Islamists' political platforms, and efforts to build alliances with other opposition groups. By examining the debates within the Islamists movements, Between Religion and Politics is able to assess the party leaders' evaluations of their political experiences and their prospects for future participation. Contents include • The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Islamist Participation in a Closing Political Environment • Jordan and Its Islamic Movement: The Limits of Inclusion? • Party for Justice and Development in Morocco: Participation and Its Discontents • Pushing toward Party Politics? Kuwait's Islamic Constitutional Movement • Between Government and Opposition: The Case of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform • Hamas: Battling to Blend Religion, Politics, Resistance, and Governance