"The Shakers are known for self-denial and austerity in everyday living and their material world, as embodied by the heavenly simplicity and purity of their chairs and blanket chests. Yet the believers also enjoyed a diversity of visual pleasures, from flowers, sunsets, rainbows, and the northern lights as seen at home to waterfalls, ocean waves, and dramatic cliffs viewed while traveling across America. In Shaker Vision, Joseph Manca explores original...

Deceased sixteen-year-old Tegan is appalled to discover that heaven is a replica of the motel where she spent the worst weekend of her life, and her only hope is for Zelda, the teen angel responsible for the supposed error, to explore Tegan's memories and unearth her true happiest moment.

"A harrowing, powerful journey into Mexico City's and California's anexos, the informal addiction treatment centers where mothers send their children to escape the violence of the drug war"--

"Zhou Enlai, China's first premier, is overshadowed by Chairman Mao, but Zhou's influence in his own time and since has been vast. Chen Jian shows Zhou using his political and bureaucratic skills and centralism to mitigate the damage caused by Mao's radicalism and argues that Zhou created conditions for the post-Mao reforms that have made China a superpower."--

"In this candid retrospective of the disco era, 40 men and women who reigned over the dance music industry of the 1970s and 1980s recall their lives and careers. Artists interviewed include Anderson, formerly of Chic; Cermanski and Upchurch of The Trammps; Jones of the Village People; Debbie, Joni and Kim Sledge of Sister Sledge; and many more"--

"Short stories from 25 emerging and established writers of Middle Eastern and North African origins, a unique collection of voices and viewpoints that illuminate life in the global Arab/Muslim world. Stories from the Center of the World gathers new writing from the Greater Middle East, a vast region that stretches from Southwest Asia, through the Middle East and Turkey, and across Northern Africa. The 25 authors included here are either native to...

"This study examines the Camp Livingston site of Japanese alien internment in Louisiana during World War II. The authors analyze the experiences of one extended family and the trauma, uncertainty, and injustice they experienced"--

"A herald of desire, suffering, mortality, and the mission of poetry itself, Jane Miller's Paper Banners 'say[s] the cosmos / isn't hostile. / Yet strangles a dove / with one hand.' Against this angst, Miller steps outside of history to contemplate voices of love, aging, and artmaking. Many poems are addressed to family members, friends, and young poets, or pay homage to familiar figures taken by time or tragedy, including Virginia Woolf, Osip Mandelstam,...