Product Description: In this disturbing and wide-ranging account, acclaimed journalist Juliette Volcler looks at the long history of efforts by military and police forces to deploy sound against enemies, criminals, and law–abiding citizens. During the 2004 battle over the Iraqi city of Fallujah, U...read more

Product Description: Coming of age in 1960s Paris, Bernard Appelbaum exists in the hazy shadow of the Holocaust and on the electric cusp of the French New Wave. We find the narrator of Wide Awake as he wanders the city streets in search of signs of his father, who was deported by the Nazis in 1942...read more

Product Description: The fundamental gesture of weaving in The Craft of Zeus is the interlacing of warp and woof described by Plato in The Statesman--an interweaving signifying the union of opposites. From rituals symbolizing--even fabricating--the cohesion of society to those proposed by oracles as a means of propitiating fortune; from the erotic and marital significance of weaving and the woven robe to the use of weaving as a figure for language and the fabric of the text, this lively and lucid book defines the logic of one of the central concepts in Greek and Roman thought--a concept that has persisted, woof and warp crossing again and again, as the fabric of human history has unfolded...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This original account of the significance of the pig and its relationship to Jews in European Christian culture encompasses a vast array of folklore, history and ritual. Practices related to the breeding, slaughter and consumption of the pig have inspired both religious and secular taboos and rituals, laid out by the author in fascinating detail...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Using the playful, orally inspired, and partially invented language for which he is renowned, Patrick Chamoiseau recalls the brilliant, magical universe of his early childhood in Martinique. At the center of this universe is his extraordinarily vigorous mother and her creative, pragmatic ways of coping with poverty and five children. As Chamoiseau presents these first impressions of an exceptional child growing up in a rich Creole culture, he also reflects in oblique but incisive ways on colonialism. He probes the boundary between reality and imagination, between the child’s awakening understanding and the adult’s memory of those earlier days.

Product Description: Using the playful, orally inspired, and partially invented language for which he is renowned, Patrick Chamoiseau recalls the brilliant, magical universe of his early childhood in Martinique. At the center of this universe is his extraordinarily vigorous mother and her creative, pragmatic ways of coping with poverty and five children...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Desperate to escape her domineering mother, Yan-Zi decides to commit suicide to remove the bonds of her mother's love, and, in the moments after her death, she recounts with a detached and keen eye the story of her last days.

When Emile Hazel moves with his wife, Juliette, to the French countryside, he finds himself beholden to a bizarre neighbor and trapped by his own weaknesses, in the American debut of one of France's rising literary stars.

Much to the chagrin of his boss, wife, and colleagues, scrupulously moral Mourad refuses to accept 'commissions' for his work, until overwhelming pressures make him give in, with disastrous results

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Product Description: Ivar Ekeland extends his consideration of the catastrophe theory of the universe begun in his widely acclaimed Mathematics and the Unexpected, by drawing on rich literary sources, particularly the Norse saga of Saint Olaf, and such current topics as chaos theory, information theory, and particle physics...read more

Recounts the World War II experiences of a seven to twelve-year-old French boy from a middle-class Catholic family, describing how he reacted to the changing circumstances

French soldiers escape from a German prison camp during World War II and, on foot and unarmed, make a dangerous and heroic journey back to France, beset by hunger, paranoia, physical exhaustion, and hopelessness.

A boy studies the background and work of the artists of the Italian Renaissance and how their discovery of how to depict perspective in painting spread to other parts of Europe

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Based on the author's experience and many interviews, explores cultural differences and how they affect relationshios and attitudes toward love, friendship and family