The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter


Book Description

On April 7, 1988, Albie Sachs, an activist South African lawyer and a leading member of the ANC, was car-bombed in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, by agents of South Africa’s security forces. His right arm was blown off, and he lost sight in one eye. This intimate and moving account of his recovery traces the gradual recuperation of his broken body and his triumphant reentry into the world, where his dream of soft vengeance was realized with the achievement of democracy in South Africa. This book captures the spirit of a remarkable man: his enormous optimism, his commitment to social justice, and his joyous wonder at the life that surrounds him. A new preface and epilogue reflect on the making of Abby Ginzberg’s documentary film titled Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa. (For information about the film, see www.softvengeancefilm.org.)










The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter


Book Description

"I've never read anything quite like this bookwild, loving, sad, with humor striking deep as emotion."—Nadine Gordimer




Soft Vengeance


Book Description

Winner of a Peabody Award, SOFT VENGEANCE is a film about Albie Sachs, a lawyer, writer, art lover and freedom fighter set against the dramatic events leading to the overthrow of the apartheid regime in South Africa.. As a young lawyer, Albie defended those committed to ending apartheid. For his actions, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Cape Town, tortured through sleep deprivation and forced into exile. In 1988, he was blown up by a car bomb set by the South African security forces in Maputo, Mozambique but miraculously he survived and after a long year of rehabilitation in England, recovered.. Returning to South Africa following the release of Nelson Mandela, Albie helped write the new Constitution and was then appointed as one of the first 11 judges to the new Constitutional Court, which for the past 23 years has been insuring that the rights of all South Africans are afforded protection. His decision upholding the right to same sex marriage has become a model world-wide. At its core, this is a film about reconciliation not retribution, about putting faith in law, fairness and humanity and renouncing torture, punishment and recrimination.. "An emotive film that recognizes the power and endurance of the human spirit at its best." - The Guardian (UK).




The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law


Book Description

Albie Sachs gives an intimate account of his extraordinary life and work as a judge in South Africa. Mixing autobiography with reflections on his major cases and the role of law in achieving social justice, Sachs offers a rare glimpse into the workings of the judicial mind and a unique perspective on modern South African history.




Death Without Weeping


Book Description

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside "favela". Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage. It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing - and controversial - is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.




The 48 Laws of Power


Book Description

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.




War Against the Mafia


Book Description

The first book in the classic vigilante action series from a “writer who spawned a genre” (The New York Times). Overseas, Mack Bolan was dubbed “Sgt. Mercy” for the compassion he showed the innocent. On the home front, they’re calling him the Executioner for what he’s doing to the guilty. In the jungles of Southeast Asia, American sniper Mack Bolan honed his skills. After twelve years, with ninety-five confirmed hits, he returns home to Massachusetts. But it’s not to reunite with his family, it’s to bury them—victims in a mass murder/suicide. Even though Bolan’s own father pulled the trigger, he knows the old man was no killer. He was driven to madness by Mafia thugs who have turned his idyllic hometown into a new kind of war zone. Duty calls . . . Introducing an action hero “who would make Jack Reacher think twice,” this is the first book in the iconic series of vigilante justice that has become a publishing phenomenon (Empireonline.com). With more than two hundred million Executioner books sold since its debut, the series continues to stimulate. Gerry Conway, cocreator of Marvel Comics’ The Punisher, credits the Executioner as “my inspiration . . . that’s what gave me the idea for the lone, slightly psychotic avenger.” The series is also now in development as a major motion picture. War Against the Mafia is the 1st book in the Executioner series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.




The Limits of Transition: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 Years on


Book Description

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a noble attempt to begin to address the continuing traumatic legacy of Apartheid. This interdisciplinary collection critiques the work of the TRC 20 years since its establishment. Taking the paralysing political and social crises of the mid-1990s in South Africa as starting point, the book contains a collection of responses to the TRC that considers the notions of crisis, judgment and social justice. It asks whether the current political and social crises in South Africa are linked to the country’s post-apartheid transitional mechanisms, specifically, the TRC. The fact that the material conditions of the lives of many Apartheid victims have not improved, forms a major theme of the book. Collectively, the book considers the ‘unfinished business’ of the TRC.