A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • The author needs to take a writing course!
  • Stockholm Syndrome?
  • A Disturbing Book
  • Author seemed too sympathetic to the skins
  • Compelling and frightening read
A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America
Elinor Langer
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

AmericaAmerica | Race Relations | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Discrimination & RacismDiscrimination & Racism | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Radical ThoughtRadical Thought | Ideologies | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Murder & MayhemMurder & Mayhem | True Accounts | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
OregonOregon | State & Local | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:
  1. Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture
  2. AMERICAN SKIN: A Novel AMERICAN SKIN: A Novel
  3. The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen
  4. The White Separatist Movement In The United States: White, Power, White Pride The White Separatist Movement In The United States: White, Power, White Pride
  5. Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America

ASIN: 0312423632
Release Date: 2004-10-14

Book Description

On November 12, 1988, a group of Portland, Oregon, skinheads known as East Side White Pride encountered three Ethiopians in a street fight, resulting in the brutal death of Mulugeta Seraw.For award-winning journalist Elinor Langer, the Seraw case is the launchpad for a thorough investigation of the Nazi-inspired racist movement in the United States. She vividly reconstructs the world of the skinheads: their origins in the punk scene, their basement shrines to Nazi power, their moments of glory on Oprah and Geraldo. She examines the long-standing radical groups that encouraged the movement, tracking the progress of such powerful figures as White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger through key bastions of the Far Right. In gripping detail, she follows civil-rights lawyer Morris Dees's efforts to prove Metzger responsible for the Portland killing-a sensational campaign to curb the growth of neo-Nazism.Compelling, disturbing, and important, A Hundred Little Hitlers is both an epic account of racism and justice and a close examination of social forces that loom ever more dangerously today.

Customer Reviews:

1 out of 5 stars The author needs to take a writing course!.......2007-02-20

This is undoubtably the most poorly-written book I have read in years. Paragraphs go on for pages, sentences are so long they lose their point, and punctuation has very little to do with standard English. I made myself finish this book because I wanted to understand the events, but I had to force myself through the writing itself. In addition, the author seems to blame everyone for this crime except for the ones who committed it. Perhaps she is trying to defend her hometown, or--as another reviewer speculated--she fell under the spell of the skinhead propaganda. In any case, I would never recommend this book to anyone. If you want to know what happened in Portland, look up old newspaper articles. It would be easier and more enjoyable reading.

3 out of 5 stars Stockholm Syndrome?.......2007-02-03

While I'm sure that Angela Langer was not kidnapped by the skinheads of Portland, Oregon, some conclusions she offers in her book A HUNDRED LITTLE HITLERS seem to show the influence of this syndrome. Certainly, her title choice of LITTLE Hitlers gives away her point of view immediately that these dangerous skinheads and racists are "little" and therefore not dangerous.

For some reason, she has taken the side of the skinheads in the trial of the beating death of Ethiopian Mulegeta Seraw. Perhaps she spent too much time with the racists. Perhaps she was too enamored with racist propagandist Tom Metzger. Maybe she didn't like the SPLC's Morris Dees because he had been married four times before he brought charges against Metzger's American Nazi diatribes.

Who knows for sure? We do find out soon, however, that we are left with the flavor of Langer's sympathy for the racists who would, and did, attack any person of color, any immigrant, any Jew, at any time. She argues that these racists were not programmed by Tom Metzger and his propaganda, and that Dees was wrong and possibly evil in bringing Metzger to court.

Her anger is misdirected against the victim, the courts, the police, the legal system and the concerned citizens of Portland who combined to bring justice in this case.

Perhaps she now needs to be de-programmed.

by Larry Rochelle, author of HOME SCHOOLED

4 out of 5 stars A Disturbing Book.......2006-02-08

This is an interesting and disturbing book that is well worth the reading time. The book is disturbing on many levels, for the story it tells and, at times, for the author's own attitudes.

The initial story is a simple one, albeit the author is sometimes very insightful in her telling of it. Racists skinheads, egged on by their equally racist girl friends, have a chance encounter with not entirely sober Ethiopian immigrants, beat the heck out of some of them and kill another. This ultimately results in the usual round of plea bargains in which the defendant skinheads receive sentences that are probably lighter than what they were due, but in which justice is nominally served. These crimes also eventually result in what was probably a mostly politically motivated trial in which the Southern Poverty Law Center [acting on behalf of a relative of the murdered victim] squares off against two of America's leading propagandists for racism, Tom Metzger and son, and obtains a financially ruinous civil judgment against the Metzgers.

The author spends a reasonable amount of time giving us some background on the victims of this crime - people who were or are remarkably like most of our forbearers of several generations back. She also spends what is, IMHO, an excessive amount of time on the backgrounds of the perpetrators of the crime and their close associates. The theme in the latter set of minibiographies is how most of these thugs have had deprived childhoods resulting in total social disorientation.

The objectives of the book are three fold: (1) the author wants to illustrate for us the racist background of a part of the Western United States and how that historical background lapped over into the recent late 20th century; (2) she wants to illustrate how quickly neoNazism can take hold of a given subculture; and (2) she wants to deplore the civil trial against the Metzgers as a travesty of justice and an abuse of the judicial system. She is successful in making out a case for her first objective. She wholly fails in her second objective. And she is, unfortunately, partially successful in her third objective, while contradicting herself at numerous points along the way.

The author's concerns over the threat of neoNazism springs from a confusion of symbols with reality and, consequently, misses what should be a real concern. The skinheads in her story were unquestionably racists and clearly immersed themselves in Nazi and American racist [Klan] symbols and slogans. The point of that immersion was, however, to simply give their disgustingly violent and drug laden lives some magic signs to hang onto and to throw in the face of the world. They could have easily, and with the same degree of understanding and commitment, latched onto Satanists or Revolutionary Maoists or whatever other in-your-face symbolisms came their way. The real Nazis, the ideological Nazis, whose objective were well focused and executed were the Metzgers and their ilk. Yet it is exactly those people with whom the author seems most sympathetic.

The more critical error in this volume is the author's love hate relationship with the American justice system. On the one hand she seems to have some vague and sporadic understanding that justice is not a simple thing and that the procedures that in fact protect rights have grown up through trial and error [no pun intended] over centuries. The justice system is a tool well suited to its purpose. But just as a wrench can be correctly used to accurately tighten a screw, it can also be misused as a club when that is the goal of the participants in the process. In the instant case of the civil trial of the Metzgers by the SPLC the goals of all parties, not just the SPLC, were focused on something other than obtaining justice.

The author makes out a convincing case that the goal of the SPLC was to use the court as a political tool to crush those whose views it was ideologically opposed and to raise donations to its own treasury. Yet, one is left with the impression that the author thinks that the general objective of fighting racism is a good one, but that to utilize available tools in that fight is somehow slimy. Further, one should, apparently, never materially benefit from successfully waging such a struggle. There is a certain odor about this argument that reminds one of the "reasoning" of those tracts which denounce "International Jewish Bankers" as sometimes useful, but basically deplorable and dangerous.

While the author mentions, more or less in passing, that the Metzgers also came to their trial as a political stage, and that they elected to run their own case and "defend" themselves largely for that reason, she then seems to entirely miss the boat on the necessary implications of that kind of "I don't want justice, I want publicity" orientation by a defendant. Despite sentences and paragraphs to the contrary, one gets the impression that the author really believes that the case against the Metzer's for conspiracy to commit tort damages should have been transformed, at the initiative of the Court, into a constitutional case principally concerned with free speech. The author apparently feels, without very clear articulation, that defendants, who she herself illustrates to have made a career out of inciting violence, should have been exonerated from paying damage to a victim of such violence, despite their own utter failure to show that such incitements were usually general and nonspecific and were not directed to actually result in any particular violence at a particular time and place. IMHO it is one thing to maintain that the Metzgers case was winnable, had they stuck to and developed the facts illustrating that they had no direct connection to the subject murder. It is entirely a different thing to maintain the naively silly position that the Metzgers should not have been found to be guilty when they ran their case as a political campaign rather than a lawsuit. I am, however, left with the firm impression that the author believes they should have been found "not guilty" on some vague principal of abstract justice, regardless of how, or for what purposes, they conducted their defense.

This is an interesting book, well worth reading, for the factual descriptions it gives of those who pass through its pages. We get a real feel for what the lives of young street punks from the American nihilist underbelly are really like. We get some insights [not insights that many naive "idealists" well welcome, but insights nonetheless] into what ideological political struggle is really like. We get a fairly good, if somewhat too sketchy, look at the "radical right" racists subculture in this society. The strengths of this book are many, it is just the author's conclusions that need some work.

4 out of 5 stars Author seemed too sympathetic to the skins .......2005-12-21

In my opinion, that is. I found it a bit hard to read because Mrs. Langer's prose wasn't flowing easily, but she did engage my interest and once I finished it, I was grateful to God--not just because I'd managed to read the entire book in less than 2 days but because I don't live in that part of the country!

(It's difficult enough living where I do, in the dirty South. I cannot imagine at all trying to eke out a living in the Pacific Northwest, which is as notorious for racism as is this area of the USA known far and wide as the Confederacy.)

Other than finding Mrs. Langer's prose stumbling at times, my only other problem is her seeming sympathy towards these racists,
in particular Tom Metzger. The man lost nearly everything and I cannot say that I feel sorry for him; he deserved it, I guess,
even though those skinheads clearly acted on their own initiative.
They saw a black man, knocked him to the street, kicked him when he was down--as all cowards do--and beat him to death with that bat.

The act itself doesn't surprise me--at the time it did but I didn't know so much about the pitiful history of lynching in this
so-fair land of ours--but having read all I could on the subject of racism, racist murders, and hate crimes, now nothing surprises
or shocks me in America.

May God have mercy on their souls!

4 out of 5 stars Compelling and frightening read.......2004-09-05

Murder happens all the time in this country. A brutal murder that's movitated simply by racism and committed by a Nazi skinhead in the United States, though, is quite another matter. In 1988 a Nazi skinhead by the name of Kenneth Mieske beat the head in of a Ethiopian immigrant by the name of Mulugeta Seraw over a minor disagreement that gets out of hand. Elinor Langer's fine book provides the background, the pathology if you like, of this disease that allows violence against people of other races to continue in our country.

Langer begins with the murder and then traces the roots of the movement in Portland that gave rise to the neo-Nazi skinhead movement in her state. She also looks at the poverty, submerged anger, drug use and philosphy that feeds the anger that leads to events like this. In many respects, Langer's book (which began as a series of ongoing articles about the case) provides a glimpse into America's darker side. We discover how the movement began, how it spreads and how it takes root in communities outside her own as well.

While it isn't necessarily the easiest book to read, it's compelling and thoughtful. It's not lite reading for the beach but it's the type of book for those interested in how society makes a wrong turn as it grows and matures. Her coverage of the trial, the evidence and the feelings of those involved gives a borad perspective into what fans the flames of monsterous acts in our world. A Hundred Little Hitlers frightens me worse than any Stephen King novel or the latest "Resident Evil" movie could because it's about the world around us.
Death in White Bear Lake
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • well written, sad, interesting
  • Chilling Story of Child Abuse in a Small Town
  • Superbly researched and written
  • Disturbing
  • A moving read
Death in White Bear Lake
Barry Siegel
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

CriminologyCriminology | Crime & Criminals | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:
  1. Lines of Defense Lines of Defense
  2. Shades of Gray Shades of Gray
  3. To Die For: The Shocking True Story of Serial Killer Dana Sue Gray To Die For: The Shocking True Story of Serial Killer Dana Sue Gray
  4. Cold Blooded (St. Martin's True Crime Library) Cold Blooded (St. Martin's True Crime Library)
  5. Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer

ASIN: 0553057901
Release Date: 1990-06-01

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars well written, sad, interesting.......2006-05-02

This is a very well written book. It is a very sad true story of child abuse by adoptive parents. At the time of 3-year-old Dennis Jurgens' death, most child abuse cases were not prosecuted. Barry Siegel skillfully tells the story of how Dennis' birth mother stirred up interest in his death, just when people were becoming more aware of child abuse cases and physical abuse started to be prosecuted. The story of the town of White Bear Lake is intrinsic to the story. The adoptive parents, Harold and Lois Jurgens, got married in the small town after WWII, in a community of young families geared toward the mother staying home and raising kids. In the postwar suburban world of mom and apple pie, a woman abusing her kids was unimaginable. Lois' brother was a force to be reckoned with in the City Police. He managed to intimidate many who knew the bad things that went on in the suburban home of Harold and Lois. The Jurgens could not have children of their own, but managed to adopt in spite of Lois' history of mental problems. Reading about the hell the adopted children went through is very difficult and affecting. The first child the Jurgens adopted grew up to be a police officer, and his role in the story is very interesting. This is a very sad, very well-written book, one you won't be able to put down.

4 out of 5 stars Chilling Story of Child Abuse in a Small Town.......2005-04-26

The 1960's were a different time. A murder case required a witness or a "smoking gun". Battered Child Syndrome was a term that was still just an idea in someone's mind. These two facts meant that justice might never come for a three-year-old boy named Dennis Jurgens.

"Death in White Bear Lake" is a meticulously researched story of Dennis Jurgens. Dennis was adopted at the age of one and placed with a seemingly average family in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Despite scattered clues that the Jurgens' family may be unsuitable to have children, Dennis was placed in their apparently warm and loving home. The decision proved fatal after Dennis fell down a flight of stairs leading to the basement.

But is that what really happened? The book does an excellent job telling the horrific story of how the system failed Dennis, as well as five other children adopted by this family. It also tells of how politics in a small town as well as the way the laws worked in the 1960's almost prevented Dennis from ever getting justice as well as how people turned a blind eye to child abuse rather than standing up for the defenseless victims. Finally, it tells the story of Jerry Sherwood, the natural mother of Dennis who has not seen him on over 20 years, only to find out he was allowed to die by the society who felt she could not provide the life that Dennis deserved.

The book is meticulously researched and well written. The book is so detailed that it seems that it was written as a movie script rather than a novel. Sometimes the book felt more like reading a long news article. I found the beginning of the book rather slow reading, to the point where I actually put the book down for awhile.

I'd highly recommend the book to people interested in a sad story of true crime. I am not sure if the paperback version contains the photographs in the center, but I would recommend not looking at the pictures until finishing the book. The pictures actually will give away the ending of the book.

5 out of 5 stars Superbly researched and written.......2004-01-04

Incredible book. I could scarcely put it down, and since it's a mighty thick book, I found myself bringing it with me everywhere to read it at any free moment. I was disappointed that I couldn't find any other non-fiction work by Barry Siegel. He has a real gift for writing in this genre.

4 out of 5 stars Disturbing.......2003-11-24

I found this book to be quite disturbing, it was well written, chock full of information and research. I never knew that before the 60's most people were never charged with child abuse most of the time, because most believed that a parent could never do that to their own child. What I found most horrific was that most of the relative's were aware of the abuse of dennis and turned a blind eye toward that evil woman, lois. And her husband Harold? what a loser! he deserved jail time for his complicity in the crime.

5 out of 5 stars A moving read.......2003-11-19

Get out your kleenexes when you start this book. It is a sad, and unfortunately true tale of child abuse in an all american town. Child abuse is often hidden and ignored, and the abuser and her husband seemed to be enabled to continue their behavior by most of the town. Unfortunately their is no happy ending here. You will never forget this book when you read it.
Death of White Sociology
Average customer rating: Not rated
    Death of White Sociology
    Ladner
    Manufacturer: Black Classic Press
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

    GeneralGeneral | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
    GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
    Social TheorySocial Theory | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
    HistoryHistory | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
    African-American StudiesAfrican-American Studies | Special Groups | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
    GeneralGeneral | Special Groups | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
    Similar Items:
    1. Black Picket Fences : Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class Black Picket Fences : Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class
    2. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Revised 10th Anniv 2nd Edition) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Revised 10th Anniv 2nd Edition)

    ASIN: 1574780077

    Amazon.com

    Edited by Howard University professor Joyce Ladner, The Death of White Sociology offers brilliant descriptions of black identity with excellent essays from writers like Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, who take aim at the "social science fiction" of Euro-American sociological analysis, as well as political scientist Ron Walters's "Toward a Definition of Black Social Science" and E. Franklin Frazier's unsentimental critique, "The Failure of the Negro Intellectual." In a new foreword, Ladner notes that when the anthology was originally published in 1973, it "provoked healthy debates over a range of issues: Does Black sociology exist? If so, what are its theoretical assumptions, and what is the range of subject matter it covers?" The writers gathered within these pages provide diverse answers to those questions, examining--and refuting--Eurocentric distortions of what and who black people are. --Eugene Holley Jr.
    The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death
    Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
    • Attack? On who?
    • Less Than A Star, Really....
    • The tales of Hoffman
    • A vicious attack on Mormonism
    • excellent book
    The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death
    Steven Naifeh , and Gregory White Smith
    Manufacturer: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Hardcover

    GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
    True CrimeTrue Crime | True Accounts | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
    ControversialControversial | Mormonism | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
    Other Denominations & SectsOther Denominations & Sects | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
    Similar Items:
    1. No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
    2. The Mormon Conspiracy The Mormon Conspiracy
    3. By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri
    4. The Mormon Murders The Mormon Murders
    5. The Mountain Meadows Massacre The Mountain Meadows Massacre

    ASIN: 1555840647

    Customer Reviews:

    5 out of 5 stars Attack? On who?.......2005-02-20

    This book is no more an attack on the Mormon church than a history of slavery in the South is an attack on America. It's just a well-written book about facts.

    The book is not pro or anti-mormon. The reader is left to make his/her own decisions.

    It is all too easy to spot those who have not read the book by the way they word their criticism and use Amazon as a forum to promote thier religious beliefs.

    1 out of 5 stars Less Than A Star, Really...........2004-05-11

    To be quite honest, this book stinks. At first, the book does grasp you and you feel like "This is a really good book, nothing bad about it." But then, as each chapter goes further into a "momon bashing fit", the story deteriorates into what read as a "I Hate Mormons" campaign/manifesto. It feels as though the writers started not caring about what they wrote, as long as it was seen that mormons "are bad people, becuase they are human...shame on them, shame!....".

    All told, I wasted $2.50 for a used copy of this book and increased my stupidity for it.

    3 out of 5 stars The tales of Hoffman.......2004-04-29

    This book details the history of Mark Hoffman, one of the most controversial figures in modern day Mormonism. This was the first book that I had read on Hoffman. I read it as a young man (about 16 years of age), and it prompted me to do further study on certain questions regarding Mormonism that I found troubling. In a sense, I owe the authors of this book a debt of gratitude, as it was through them that I eventually learned of Fawn Brodie and the Tanners. I've been out of Mormonism for nearly 13 years now. I am deeply grateful to be out of Mormonism.

    I re-read this book again recently. It is a fascinating tale, certainly. However, it does seem to be too sensationalistic in points (not that the Hoffman story isn't sensational!). For a more balanced version of the Tales of Hoffman, I would reccommend Robert Lindsay's A Gathering of Saints.

    3 out of 5 stars A vicious attack on Mormonism.......2004-04-12

    At first sight, this appears to be an engrossing true-crime narrative. But it soon becomes evident that the real agenda of the authors is to use the crime case as an excuse for attacking the Mormon church. All of the Mormon leaders are presented as scoundrels and all of the followers are presented as fools. In short, Mormonism is demonized. The book is full of cheap shots. No stone is left unturned in the authors' quest to ridicule Mormonism. This is out of place in a true-crime book and hopelessly detracts and distracts from the narrative. We are expected to believe that two-thirds of the inhabitants of an American state are scoundrels and fools. Nonsense!

    5 out of 5 stars excellent book.......2003-05-19

    If you read the other reviews of this book, or any other book which Mormons might consider uncomplimentary of their faith, it is easy to pick out who are the Mormon reviewers and who are not. If the book criticizes Mormonism, the Mormon reviewers inevitably slam the book, call it fiction, say that it slanted, biased, uninformed, etc., etc.

    That being said, I thought "The Mormon Murders" was excellent. The authors obviously had extensive information from insiders on the case, particularly some of the police officers and prosecutors. Mark Hoffman, perhaps the most accomplished forger in American history, manipulates and tricks everyone he comes in contact with, duping them like the con-man extraordinaire he is. And despite their alleged power of discernment, the Mormon leadership is duped even more easily than the common people in the book.

    There was never a thorough, public accounting of the Hoffman case because the LDS leaders pressured the prosecuting attorney to lower the charges and let Hoffman plea-bargain---thus saving high-ranking LDS leaders from having to testify under oath.

    This story has been depicted by a few different books. After this book, "Salamander" and "A Gathering of Saints" painted uncomplimentary versions of the LDS Church's complicity in these crimes the Church fought back in a round-about way by having some LDS scholar write a book called "Victims" and publish it through the Univ. of Illinois. Don't be fooled--the book's main purpose is to try and exonerate the LDS leaders from looking like idiots at best and conspirators at worse.

    I've read that the rights to "The Mormon Murders" were purchased by a network. It is a great story for a TV movie and yet, not surprisingly, it has never made the big screen or little screen. Does anyone have to guess why?
    Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South
    Average customer rating: Not rated
      Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South
      W. Fitzhugh Brundage
      Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

      GeneralGeneral | 19th Century | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
      GeneralGeneral | 20th Century | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
      SouthSouth | State & Local | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
      Social HistorySocial History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
      AmericaAmerica | Race Relations | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
      GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
      Discrimination & RacismDiscrimination & Racism | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
      African-American StudiesAfrican-American Studies | Special Groups | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
      Violence in SocietyViolence in Society | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
      CriminologyCriminology | Crime & Criminals | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
      All TitlesAll Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
      NonfictionNonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
      Similar Items:
      1. A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930
      2. Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 (Blacks in the New World) Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 (Blacks in the New World)
      3. Lynching in America: A History in Documents Lynching in America: A History in Documents
      4. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (Modern Library Paperbacks) At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (Modern Library Paperbacks)
      5. 100 Years of Lynchings 100 Years of Lynchings

      ASIN: 0807846368
      Release Date: 1997-05-14

      Book Description

      From the assembled work of fifteen leading scholars emerges a complex and provocative portrait of lynching in the American South. With subjects ranging in time from the late antebellum period to the early twentieth century, and in place from the border states to the Deep South, this collection of essays provides a rich comparative context in which to study the troubling history of lynching.

      Covering a broad spectrum of methodologies, these essays further expand the study of lynching by exploring such topics as same-race lynchings, black resistance to white violence, and the political motivations for lynching. In addressing both the history and the legacy of lynching, the book raises important questions about Southern history, race relations, and the nature of American violence. Though focused on events in the South, these essays speak to patterns of violence, injustice, and racism that have plagued the entire nation.

      The contributors are Bruce E. Baker, E. M. Beck, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Joan E. Cashin, Paula Clark, Thomas G. Dyer, Terence Finnegan, Larry J. Griffin, Nancy MacLean, William S. McFeely, Joanne C. Sandberg, Patricia A. Schechter, Roberta Senechal de la Roche, Stewart E. Tolnay, and George C. Wright.
      Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914-1945 (Social History of Africa)
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914-1945 (Social History of Africa)
        Myron Echenberg
        Manufacturer: Heinemann
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Paperback

        GeneralGeneral | Africa | History | Subjects | Books
        SenegalSenegal | Africa | History | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | World | History | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        Ethnic StudiesEthnic Studies | Special Groups | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        Forensic MedicineForensic Medicine | Pathology | Specialties | Medicine | Subjects | Books
        Forensic MedicineForensic Medicine | Pathology | Internal Medicine | Medicine | Medical | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
        Similar Items:
        1. Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness
        2. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History The African AIDS Epidemic: A History
        3. The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care, No 30) The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care, No 30)

        ASIN: 0325070164

        Book Description

        Looking at the bubonic plague in colonial Senegal between 1914 and 1945, the author examines how colonizer and colonized changed their perceptions of the epidemic over time. Africans tenaciously resisted coercive and punitive plague control measures, and achieved a remarkable success in preventing the imposition of urban residential segregation. Whereas French bio-medical officials were initially convinced they would triumph over the plague pathogen, and contemptuously rejected the applied knowledge of African healers, many Africans regarded plague as biological warfare utilized by their conquerors. Attitudes changed as the plague became endemic from 1918 to 1945, imposing an especially severe burden on women. Coercive plague control measures such as compulsory vaccination, travel restrictions, and undignified burial, generated strong resistance, yet colonial officials gradually won the consent of a westernized minority of the African elite who came to equate Western bio-medicine with The call to segregate urban residents resonated throughout the plague years. The success of Africans in employing the law and, occasionally, the streets, to resist forced relocation and residential segregation was a remarkable achievement. Changing disease ecology played a complex role in the spread of bubonic plague, aided by such colonial capitalist initiatives as railways, ports, cash crop market farming, and labor migration. The powerful new pesticide DDT, administered by U.S. Army medics in 1944, probably ended the plague cycle, although in postcolonial Senegal, the structural issues lying behind the disease are not being addressed.
        Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India
        Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
        • Death by religion in India
        Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India
        Catherine Weinberger-Thomas
        Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Hardcover

        SuicideSuicide | Death & Grief | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
        IndiaIndia | Asia | History | Subjects | Books | Ancient
        CulturalCultural | Anthropology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        Customs & TraditionsCustoms & Traditions | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        DeathDeath | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        WomenWomen | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | Hinduism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
        HistoryHistory | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
        Similar Items:
        1. Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts
        2. Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining  Gender and Kinship in North India Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India
        3. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)

        ASIN: 0226885682

        Book Description

        "At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands—horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power.

        Ashes of Immortality attempts to see the satis through Hindu eyes, providing an extensive experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of sati reemerged in the 1970s, as well as extensive textual analysis, Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.

        Customer Reviews:

        4 out of 5 stars Death by religion in India.......2000-10-08

        A powerful account of a disturbing aspect of India's rich cultural history, 'Ashes of Immortality' tells the sickening story of a tradition which is still present in certain parts of the great sub-continent.

        The simplicity with which the text is written belies the tragedy of these women who gave up their lives for a religious belief which some might argue only serves to degrade their gender.
        Death in Black and White: Death, Ritual and Family Ecology (Hampton Press Communication Series. Critical Bodies)
        Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
        • We ARE all in this together.
        Death in Black and White: Death, Ritual and Family Ecology (Hampton Press Communication Series. Critical Bodies)
        Charlton McIlwain
        Manufacturer: Hampton Press
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Paperback

        GeneralGeneral | Anthropology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        DeathDeath | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        Ethnic StudiesEthnic Studies | Special Groups | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
        ASIN: 1572735252

        Book Description

        Death in Black and White takes a behind-the-scenes look at contemporary funeral practices to discover what similarities and differences exist between African American and European American cultures' experience of dealing with death.

        The author charts the divergent origins of such rituals of mourning from pre-colonial Africa and Europe to the time in which these cultural traditions came into contact during the period of American slavery, and the degree of fusion and variation that persists up to the present day.

        Based on a foundation of cultural theory and scholarship, the author explores a variety of issues related to race, culture and death ritual practices by immersing himself in the rich narratives and sources of information gleaned from his in-depth interviews with funeral directors, corporate funeral home representatives, clergy and individuals who have recently lost a loved one. Additionally, he has observed numerous funeral and burial services and cemetery landscapes, and has examined federal and state public policies surrounding burial and disposal, as well as other forms of death-related discourse.

        Ultimately, the book describes how death rituals both manifest and reinforce different cultural identities, and suggests that perhaps, it is through the experience of death that we might find the most enduring possibilities for promoting greater cultural understanding by maintaining rather than eliminating such differences.

        Customer Reviews:

        5 out of 5 stars We ARE all in this together........2004-04-15

        This is a humane, engaging, and innovative text, written by an author who himself exemplifies integrative, postmodern scholarship. I find that the range of effects and affects in these pages surpasses even what the title suggests. Some readers might find it useful to begin with the final two or three chapters for current, global perceptions, and then return to preceding chapters for historical and more particular approaches. The case studies alone are worth reading the book. Above all, I hear a genuinely consoling voice-one that also offers some of the very best available cultural theory as well as a general theory of consciousness.

        McIlwain accomplishes this, first off, with an abiding good will toward the common reader. Secondly, his comfort with first-person narratives offers access to his feelings, as well as to his thinking and scholarship. This affords a wide engagement with the perennial qualities of 'differences' with which we all not only live but also, inevitably, approach the deaths of others (and ourselves). Thirdly, McIlwain has an uncanny manner that, combined with intellectual acumen, makes his point not only comprehensible but also somehow `acceptable'-that we ARE all in this together, from the beginning to the very end.
        Research paper
        Average customer rating: Not rated
          Research paper
          Becky W Thompson
          Manufacturer: Dept. of Sociology, Center for Research on Women, Memphis State University
          ProductGroup: Book
          Binding: Unknown Binding

          ResearchResearch | Education | Reference | Subjects | Books
          ASIN: B0006PI4SY

          Books:

          1. A Lifetime To Get Here: Diana Ross: The American Dreamgirl
          2. A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
          3. A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
          4. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.
          5. A Woman Alone and Other Plays (Methuen Modern Plays)
          6. After the Light: What I Discovered on the Other Side of Life That Can Change Your World
          7. Against All Odds: My Story
          8. American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood
          9. Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's
          10. Beyond Appearance: A New Look at Adolescent Girls

          Books Index

          Books Home

          Recommended Books

          1. Call of Duty: The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee
          2. The Oxford Companion to Wine, 3rd Edition
          3. Getting Mother's Body: A Novel
          4. Introduction to Animal Behavior
          5. Ronin
          6. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture
          7. Scientific Computing
          8. Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping With His Daughter: Coyote Builds North America
          9. Life Of Her Most Gracious Majesty The Queen volume 1
          10. Zip Code Data Atlas 1997