Washington Post, by Carolyn See, review in the February 2nd issue:
“This novel is brilliant because the prose glows, sends off heat. Insightful
because it allows us to see into a place that most of us don't know about.
Heartbreaking because you can feel the situation that these characters are
trapped in. And enchanting because it's told in the form of a fairy tale that
lets us believe that, somehow, these poor souls may be able to rescue themselves
. . . Laila Halaby has captured the human condition perfectly here.”
Plain Secrets,
Joe Mackall, June 2007, cloth, $24.95, 978-0-8070-1064-8
“Joe Mackall's Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among America's Most Traditional
Amish meets the biggest challenge of a book such as this by living up
to his subtitle: Mackall is both outside and among in equal measure, and it's
the most difficult terrain to occupy. Plain Secrets vibrates in that in-betweenness,
in ways that only songs or poems usually can, and it does so in prose that's
as clear as water. It’s built the way the Amish build their barns—everything
here is plumb and level.” —Diana Hume George, author of The Lonely
Other: A Woman Watching America
“At a time when America’s freedoms and liberties are under attack
in Washington, Finan’s book is a powerful reminder of why we must carry
on the fight to preserve the central underpinning of the American democratic
system—the right to free and uncensored discourse.” —Senator
Bernie Sanders
The Bone
Gatherers, Nicola Denzey, cloth, July 2007, $27.95, 978-0-8070-1308-3
“Written in a lively narrative style, The Bone Gatherers is
pitched perfectly to both the interested general reader and to scholars. Denzey’s
expert placing of the funerary images of early Christian and pagan women into
their social and cultural milieus, and her rich, well-researched iconographical
reading of ancient imagery helps us to see the changing roles of women—both
Christian and pagan—during the early centuries of Christian Rome.”
—Ann Steinsapir, author of Rural Sanctuaries in Roman Syria: The Creation
of a Sacred Landscape and education specialist at the J. Paul Getty Museum
New Acquisitions:
Searching for Strangers in Pre-Revolutionary Boston, by Sharon Salinger
and Cornelia Dayton, is about the peculiar world and work of Robert Love, whose
job was to walk the streets and wharves of Boston from 1765 to 1774 with the
specific purpose of “warning Strangers out.” This relatively unknown
phenomena of “warning out,” perhaps eerily reminiscent of contemporary
homeland securities, entailed locating strangers to Boston and giving them official
notice to depart within two weeks. Love, who became a “warner” at
age 65, warned over 3,000 people during his lifetime, leaving behind an extraordinarily
detailed logbook which has resulted in the authors recovering hundreds of ordinary
and marginal people’s lives. The book is fascinating not only for what
it tells us about Boston history but also because of the striking persona of
Robert Love who was born in Ireland, captured in Maine by Native Americans and
then ransomed.
Just Released:
With Speed
and Violence, Fred Pearce, March 2007, $24.95, 0-8070-8576-6 (10), 978-0-8070-8576-9
(13)
Library Journal, starred review in the January 15th issue: “he
has a talent for explaining science in terms understandable to the nonscientist
. . . This enjoyable read was difficult to put down. A superb educational
resource, it will make an excellent addition to any public library and is
recommended as an essential purchase for high school, college, and university
libraries.”
Booklist, starred review in December 1st issue: “No subject is more
urgent or more in need of clear scientific explication than global warming,
and [this] book provides invaluable information and insights.”
Publisher’s Weekly, review in the November 20th issue: “The
science behind climate studies is complex, but Pearce makes it accessible
enough to terrify even the most uninitiated layperson.”
“If you want to quickly get up to date on climate change and its consequences,
I recommend With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in
Climate Change. If you can read only one book on climate change, this is it.”
—Lester Brown, president, Earth Policy Institute
Advertising in Mother Jones, E Magazine and The Nation
Author appearances:
Virginia Theological Seminary/Conference on World Water Shortage, keynote
speaker, Friday, April 27th
World Affairs Council/Washington DC, panel discussion, Monday, April
30th
Cambridge Forum/Boston, May 2nd, 7:30 pm
Widening
the Circle, Mara Sapon-Shevin, paperback original, March 2007, $14.00,
978-0-8070-3280-0
Ability magazine, 5-page excerpt in the Volume 2006 issue
Publisher’s Weekly, review in December 18th issue
Coverage forthcoming in Rethinking Schools, Teacher Magazine,
Teaching Tolerance
“Widening the Circle is an ambitious, impassioned argument for
inclusive schools powered by a vision that goes far beyond the mutilated version
of 'mainstreaming’ common in American schools today. To Sapon-Shevin
the current state of affairs is a caricature of inclusive education, reductive
and impoverished, a place where every student is defined by a putative deficit,
imprisoned in a label. Her goal—breathtaking in its sweep—is to
break through the walls of the prison, and to set us all free. She shows us
that huge questions of democracy and freedom can be discovered in a simple
game of musical chairs, that our deepest values are enacted in our everyday
classroom practice. A dazzling manifesto and call to arms.” —William
Ayers, author of Teaching toward Freedom and To Teach
“Widening the Circle is packed with sharply observed challenges
to conventional ways of thinking. It digs beneath classroom strategies to
find larger truths about difference, exposing the moral implications of segregation
in the process. One by one, Sapon-Shevin skewers the philosophical and practical
objections to inclusion. Her book should be read by all educators, not just
those in the field of special education.” —Alfie Kohn, author of
The Schools Our Children Deserve and What Does It Mean to Be Well
Educated?
“I love the spirit that infuses the book and the constant reference
to the connection between school values and larger democratic values, as well
as its attention to the nitty-gritty of classroom life. A book both practical
and thoughtful.” —Deborah Meier, author of The Power of Their
Ideas
"With a profound vision and a gift for storytelling, Sapon-Shevin leads
educators to think of social justice in terms of classrooms that are truly
inclusive, and in the process, challenges and broadens the very ways that
we think about inclusion: of whom, in what ways, for what purposes. Essential
reading for all educators." —Kevin K. Kumashiro, Director, Center
for Anti-Oppressive Education
Beacon Press is a department of the