Lines of Descent


Book Description

W. E. B. Du Bois never felt so at home as when he was a student in Berlin. Germany was the first place white people had treated him as an equal. But anti-Semitism was prevalent, and Du Bois' challenge, says Kwame Anthony Appiah, was to take the best of German intellectual life without its parochialism--to steal the fire without getting burned.




Contours of Descent


Book Description

The concepts of modernity and modernism are among the most controversial and vigorously debated in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory. In this new, muscular intervention, Pollin explores these notions in a fresh and illuminating manner.




The Descent of Alette


Book Description

The Decent Of Alette is a rich odyssey of transformation in the tradition of The Inferno. Alice Notley presents a feminist epic: a bold journey into the deeper realms. Alette, the narrator, finds herself underground, deep beneath the city, where spirits and people ride endlessly on subways, not allowed to live in the world above. Traveling deeper and deeper, she is on a journey of continual transformation, encountering a series of figures and undergoing fragmentations and metamorphoses as she seeks to confront the Tyrant and heal the world. Using a new measure, with rhythmic units indicated by quotations marks, Notley has created a "spoken" text, a rich and mesmerizing work of imagination, mystery, and power.




Distorted Descent


Book Description

Distorted Descent examines a social phenomenon that has taken off in the twenty-first century: otherwise white, French descendant settlers in Canada shifting into a self-defined “Indigenous” identity. This study is not about individuals who have been dispossessed by colonial policies, or the multi-generational efforts to reconnect that occur in response. Rather, it is about white, French-descendant people discovering an Indigenous ancestor born 300 to 375 years ago through genealogy and using that ancestor as the sole basis for an eventual shift into an “Indigenous” identity today. After setting out the most common genealogical practices that facilitate race shifting, Leroux examines two of the most prominent self-identified “Indigenous” organizations currently operating in Quebec. Both organizations have their origins in committed opposition to Indigenous land and territorial negotiations, and both encourage the use of suspect genealogical practices. Distorted Descent brings to light to how these claims to an “Indigenous” identity are then used politically to oppose actual, living Indigenous peoples, exposing along the way the shifting politics of whiteness, white settler colonialism, and white supremacy.




The Descent


Book Description

We are not alone. Some call them devils or demons. But they are real. They are down there. And they are waiting for us to find them. In a cave in the Himalayas, a guide discovers a self-mutilated body with a warning: Satan exists. In the Kalahari Desert, a nun unearths evidence of a proto-human species and a deity called Older-than-Old. In Bosnia, something has been feeding upon the dead in a mass grave. So begins mankind’s most shocking realization: the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth populated by another race of beings. With all of Hell's precious resources and territories to be won, a global race ensues. Nations, armies, religions, and industries rush to colonize and exploit the subterranean frontier. A scientific expedition is launched westward to explore beneath the Pacific Ocean floor, both to catalog the riches there and to learn how life could develop in the sunless abyss. But in the dark underground, as humanity falls away from them, the scientists and mercenaries find themselves prey not only to the savage creatures, but also to their own treachery, mutiny, and greed. One thing is certain: Miles inside the earth, evil is very much alive.




Lies of Descent


Book Description

In this compelling fantasy from a debut author, two young people must unite two warring cultures to banish the gods who destroyed their homeland. The Fallen Gods' War drove the remnants of a victorious army across the ocean in search of a new homeland. A thousand years later, the lifeless continent of Draegora is largely forgotten, a symbol for the regiments that remain. Demons to some. Protectors to others. The power of their god-touched blades has forged a nation, though many resent their absolute control. Riam and Nola are unknowing descendants of the old world. When it’s discovered they carry enough Draegoran blood to serve in the regiments, they are dragged away from their families to begin training. If they survive, they will be expected to enforce the laws of the covenant, to fight the Esharii tribesmen who raid along the border, and to be judge, jury, and executioners for those accused of crimes. For Riam, who welcomes his escape from an abusive father, the power to protect those who cannot defend themselves is alluring. For Nola, who wishes to return home, it is a betrayal by all she holds dear. Neither is given a choice...and neither may ever get the chance to serve. Lies of Descent begins an epic trilogy of fallen gods, betrayal, and magic—where dark motives often dwell within the true and just, and where the things most feared sometimes lead to salvation.




Descent


Book Description

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. In 2013, poet Lauren Russell acquired a copy of the diary of her great-great-grandfather, Robert Wallace Hubert, a Captain in the Confederate Army. After his return from the Civil War, he fathered twenty children by three of his former slaves. One of those children was the poet's great-grandmother. Through several years of research, Russell would seek the words to fill the diary's omissions and to imagine the voice of her great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert, a black woman silenced by history. The result is a hybrid work of verse, prose, images and documents that traverses centuries as the past bleeds into the present. "In DESCENT, the very talented poet Lauren Russell shows us how to write what we do not know; to give with grace and dignity, humanity to names on the family tree. DESCENT is a search for truths felt in one's bones."--Brenda Coultas "An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering that asks, what do we demand of the past, and what to do with its refusal? Russell's deep archive would not answer her back. With DESCENT, however, she speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up."--Douglas Kearney "Lauren Russell's stellar new book-length poem...portrays a rich, Black American ancestral record. Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell's poems are as much ascent into a present shaped by the past as descent from America's true heroic figures."--John Keene




Ancestral Lines


Book Description

This compelling ethnography offers a nuanced case study of the ways in which the Maisin of Papua New Guinea navigate pressing economic and environmental issues. Beautifully written and accessible to most readers, Ancestral Lines is designed with introductory cultural anthropology courses in mind. Barker has organized the book into chapters that mirror many of the major topics covered in introductory cultural anthropology, such as kinship, economic pursuit, social arrangements, gender relations, religion, politics, and the environment. The second edition has been revised throughout, with a new timeline of events and a final chapter that brings readers up to date on important events since 2002, including a devastating cyclone and a major court victory against the forestry industry.




50 Classic Ski Descents of North America


Book Description

Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America is a large-format compilation of iconic and aesthetic ski descents from Alaska to Mount Washington. Created by ski mountaineers Chris Davenport, Art Burrows and Penn Newhard, Fifty Classic Ski Descents taps into the local knowledge of contributors such as Andrew McLean, Glen Plake, Lowell Skoog, Chic Scott and Ptor Spricenieks with first person descriptions of their favorite ski descents and insightful perspectives on ski mountaineering past, present and future. The book features 208 pages of gorgeous action and mountain images from many of North America's top photographers. Whether you are planning an expedition to Baffin Island's Polar Star Couloir or heading out for dawn patrol on Mount Superior, Fifty Classic Ski Descents is a visual and inspirational feast of ski mountaineering in North America.