Publishers' Weekly; starred review featured as "Pick of the Week" on the table of contents page; in the January 5th issue
"Khalidi provides a compelling history of modern conflict in the Middle East, arguing that current conflicts are by-products of the cold war and the policies, strategies and priorities of the United States and the Soviet Union. . . . Khalidi has written an important book, essential for anyone concerned about the stability of the Middle East."
Dating Jesus, Susan Campbell, January 2009, cloth, $24.95, 978-0-8070-1066-2
Mother Jones, review in the January/February 2009 issue
"Rarely has a genuine feminist emerged from the modern evangelical movement. An exception is Susan Campbell."
Beyond Bogotá, Garry Leech, January 2009, cloth, $25.95, 978-0-8070-6145-9
After Words/ C-Span; hour-long interview by Josh Rushing, former Marine featured in the documentary Control Room, currently filming the "Shadow War" series for Al Jazeera; taping Febuary 10th; airdate to come
Truthdig; an in-depth review of Beyond Bogotá was posted on December 26th
“[S]uspense and drama remain present throughout the book …. [Leech] writes with the raw passion and vivid energy of a wartime correspondent who regularly risks his life to cover stories ignored by major international media outlets. While most writers on Colombia only talk abstractly about policy, Leech goes into villages, speaks with people on the front lines and peels back the skin....Demonstrating considerable courage and persistence, Leech managed to visit the hottest areas of Colombia’s conflict, survive shootouts and detentions, interview high-ranking leaders of the FARC and the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) and visit coca farms and cocaine labs. He describes all this with compelling narrative and evocative characters, taking the reader with him on his investigative adventures. While his descriptive ability makes the reading enjoyable, it is his conclusions that leave the strongest impression....This book is an excellent way to familiarize oneself with a multifaceted conflict that sadly shows no sign of letting up soon.”
Early Spring, Amy Seidl, cloth, March 2008, $24.95, 978-0-8070-8584-4
Organic Gardening; excerpt in the March issue
Saving Paradise, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, July 2008, cloth, $34.95, 978-0-8070-6750-4
National Catholic Reporter; review in the January 9th issue
“Saving Paradise offers eye-opening explorations of the mixture of spiritual vision and myopia that marked many of the great figures of Western Christianity. Its rich text and the additional material in its notes should spur readers to examine both the darkness and the light that can be found in all of us.”
“Incrementally, bravely, honestly, Raday takes the reader into a territory where love and war trump politics. With an open heart and mind, she offers a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look into what it’s really like to be a soldier’s wife during the Iraq war. As in the best memoirs, the reader is enlightened and enlarged by a true life that’s rendered faithfully and artfully for the page.”
—Karen Propp, co-editor of Why I’m Still Married
“Compelling, lively, and insightful. Having married into a foreign culture—one that melds American law enforcement and the United States Army—Sophia Raday has written a witty, nuanced memoir that is both a love story and an anthropological expedition of discovery.”
—Rick Atkinson, winner of two Pulitzer prizes and author of An Army at Dawn
“To see the world in a weed is Nancy Gift’s approach to ecology, and she combines the knowledge of a scientist with the understanding of a parent of young children to remind us that taking care of the environment begins in our own back yards. Before you pull up that dandelion or spray the lawn ask yourself what difference it makes. It’s not the grass that needs greening—it’s our lives. Gift follows in the tradition of Rachel Carson, and her entry as a writer is timely indeed.”
—Emily Herring Wilson, author of No One Gardens Alone: A Life of Elizabeth Lawrence and Two Gardeners/Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence: A Friendship in Letters
“Nancy Gift has written a persuasively green brief in favor of organic lawns and playing fields. Morning glory, plantain, wild garlic, scarlet pimpernel, clover, and others—let nature take its course, and rejoice that you need not mess with humanly hazardous herbicides. A delightfully contrary book that may just turn your weedy enemies into friends.”
—Janet Lembke, author of From Grass to Gardens: How to Reap Bounty from a Small Yard
“Nancy Gift’s ruminations on weeds run the gamut from suburban gardener and soccer mom to highly trained weed ecologist; from conscientious neighbor to the passionate admirer of the wily and persistent plants others call pests . . . If you live anywhere in the eastern half of the US and know your weeds, you will find many old friends in this book—and recognize a few human characters as well.”
—Laura Jackson, Department of Biology, University of Northern Iowa
Beacon Backlist:
Shake Loose My Skin, Sonia Sanchez, April 2000, paperback, $14.00, 978-0-8070-6853-3
Sonia Sanchez will be reading a poem to honor Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. John Lewis, Rev. Claude Black and Aung San Suu Kyi at the fourth annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration and Realizing the Dream Awards on Inaugural weekend; Sunday, January 18th at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill
The Robert Creeley Foundation will present its annual award to Sonia Sanchez in late March
This Week in Beacon Broadside, a project of Beacon Press (www.beaconbroadside.com):
Beacon Press is a department of the