Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393239500
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Describes how a Bangladeshi immigrant, shot in the Dallas mini mart where he worked in the days after September 11 in a revenge crime, forgave his assailant and petitioned the state of Texas to spare his attacker the death penalty.
Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039324413X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Winner of the NYPL Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, NPR, and Publishers Weekly "Haunting.…[A]mong the most riveting nonfiction I have read in a long time.…The True American gives you new eyes on your nation, makes you wonder about both the recent South Asian immigrant behind the counter at the food mart and the tattooed white man behind you in line." —Eboo Patel, Washington Post The True American tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two more victims, at other gas stations, die instantly. The True American traces the making of these two men, Stroman and Bhuiyan, and of their fateful encounter. It follows them as they rebuild shattered lives—one striving on death row to become a better man, the other to heal and pull himself up from the lowest rung on the ladder of an unfamiliar country. Ten years after the shooting, an Islamic pilgrimage seeds in Bhuiyan a strange idea: if he is ever to be whole, he must reenter Stroman’s life. He longs to confront Stroman and speak to him face to face about the attack that changed their lives. Bhuiyan publicly forgives Stroman, in the name of his religion and its notion of mercy. Then he wages a legal and public-relations campaign, against the state of Texas and Governor Rick Perry, to have his attacker spared from the death penalty. Ranging from Texas’s juvenile justice system to the swirling crowd of pilgrims at the Hajj in Mecca; from a biker bar to an immigrant mosque in Dallas; from young military cadets in Bangladesh to elite paratroopers in Israel; from a wealthy household of chicken importers in Karachi, Pakistan, to the sober residences of Brownwood, Texas, The True American is a rich, profoundly moving exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions. It helps us to consider our love-hate relationship with immigrants, the underpinnings of domestic terrorism, and how—or whether—we choose what we become.
Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9351771091
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
Imagine that a terrorist tried to kill you. If you could face him again, on your terms, what would you do? Raisuddin Bhuiyan is a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to the US and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an 'American terrorist' named Mark Stroman walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Ten years after the shooting, a pilgrimage plants in Bhuiyan the seeds of a strange sentiment: mercy. He longs to meet Stroman and speak to him about the attack. He publicly forgives Stroman in the name of his religion. Then he wages a legal and public relations campaign against the State of Texas and Governor Rick Perry to have his attacker spared from the death penalty. Ranging from Texas's juvenile justice system to the crowd of pilgrims at the Hajj in Mecca; from young military cadets in Bangladesh to elite paratroopers in Israel; from a wealthy household of chicken importers in Karachi to the sober residences of Texas, The True American is an exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions.
Author: Rosemary C. Salomone
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674046528
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
How can schools meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population of newcomers? Do bilingual programs help children transition into American life, or do they keep them in a linguistic ghetto? Are immigrants who maintain their native language uninterested in being American, or are they committed to changing what it means to be American? In this ambitious book, Rosemary Salomone uses the heated debate over how best to educate immigrant children as a way to explore what national identity means in an age of globalization, transnationalism, and dual citizenship. She demolishes popular myths—that bilingualism impedes academic success, that English is under threat in contemporary America, that immigrants are reluctant to learn English, or that the ancestors of today’s assimilated Americans had all to gain and nothing to lose in abandoning their family language. She lucidly reveals the little-known legislative history of bilingual education, its dizzying range of meanings in different schools, districts, and states, and the difficulty in proving or disproving whether it works—or defining it as a legal right. In eye-opening comparisons, Salomone suggests that the simultaneous spread of English and the push toward multilingualism in western Europe offer economic and political advantages from which the U.S. could learn. She argues eloquently that multilingualism can and should be part of a meaningful education and responsible national citizenship in a globalized world.
Author: Antonia Felix
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425242951
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
"Necessary reading" (Booklist) from a New York Times bestselling biographer. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Sonia Sotomayor's former colleagues, family, friends, and teachers, New York Times bestselling biographer Antonia Felix explores Sotomayor's childhood, the values her parents instilled in her, and the events that propelled her to the highest court in the land. With insight and thoughtful analysis, Felix paints a revealing portrait of the woman who would come to meet President Obama's rigorous criteria for a Supreme Court justice, examining how Sotomayor's experiences shed light on her Supreme Court rulings-and how she will continue to write her great American legacy.
Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458763099
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Reversing his parents immigrant path, a young writer returns to India and discovers an old country making itself new. Anand Giridharadas sensed something was afoot as his plane prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, Were all trying to go that way, pointing to the rear. You, youre going this way. Giridharadas was...
Author: Patricia Rusch Hyatt
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1647004802
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
In early-nineteenth-century New England, folks considered a clean chin a sign of godliness. Born into this buttoned-up, strict society, Joseph Palmer stood out from childhood as someone who liked to do things his own way. A friend to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Alcotts, Palmer lived by his own code and grew a belly-flowing beard that made his neighbors so crazy that they tried forcibly to shave him. He fought back and ended up in prison for a year. His cause became a local sensation, and a few short decades later a president of the United States—Abraham Lincoln—would wear a beard. Narrated with the charm of a tall tale, this true story celebrates the long American history of nonconformity and encourages children to question social rules they may take for granted. Praise for Quite Contrary Man “She [Hyatt] cleanly lays out a morality tale that could prompt a healthy civics lesson. Brown's arch illustrations, in watercolor with pen and ink, nicely capture 19th-century New England.” –Kirkus Reviews “Brown’s warmhued watercolors reiterate the folk yarn feel with rustic touches. A spirited introduction to an iconoclastic 19th-century activist.” –Publishers Weekly
Author: Stephen Kinzer
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1627792171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
The bestselling author of Overthrow and The Brothers brings to life the forgotten political debate that set America’s interventionist course in the world for the twentieth century and beyond. How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat—until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country. Revealing a piece of forgotten history, Stephen Kinzer transports us to the dawn of the twentieth century, when the United States first found itself with the chance to dominate faraway lands. That prospect thrilled some Americans. It horrified others. Their debate gripped the nation. The country’s best-known political and intellectual leaders took sides. Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Randolph Hearst pushed for imperial expansion; Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, and Andrew Carnegie preached restraint. Only once before—in the period when the United States was founded—have so many brilliant Americans so eloquently debated a question so fraught with meaning for all humanity. All Americans, regardless of political perspective, can take inspiration from the titans who faced off in this epic confrontation. Their words are amazingly current. Every argument over America’s role in the world grows from this one. It all starts here.
Author: Harold Schechter
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439117306
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 398
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Book Description
FROM SOCIAL OUTCAST TO NECROPHILE AND MURDERER -- HIS APPALLING CRIMES STUNNED AN ERA. San Francisco, the 1920s. In an age when nightmares were relegated to the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and distant tales of the Whitechapel murders, a real-life monster terrorized America. His acts of butchery have proved him one of history's fiercest madmen. As an infant, Earle Leonard Nelson possessed the power to unsettle his elders. As a child he was unnaturally obsessed with the Bible; before he reached puberty, he had an insatiable, aberrant sex drive. By his teens, even Earle's own family had reason to fear him. But no one in the bone-chilling winter of 1926 could have predicted that his degeneracy would erupt in a sixteen-month frenzy of savage rape, barbaric murder, and unimaginable defilement -- deeds that would become the hallmarks of one of the most notorious fiends of the twentieth century, whose blood-lust would not be equaled until the likes of Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer. Drawing on the "gruesome, awesome, compelling reporting" (Ann Rule) that is his trademark, Harold Schechter takes a dark journey into the mind of an unrepentant sadist -- and brilliantly lays bare the myth of innocence that shrouded a bygone era.
Author: William R. Handley
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803259768
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
In no other region of the United States has the notion of authenticity played such an important yet elusive role as it has in the West. Though pervasive in literature,øpopular culture, and history, assumptions about western authenticity have not received adequate critical attention. Given the ongoing economic and social transformations in this vast region, the persistent nostalgia and desire for the ?real? authentic West suggest regional and national identities at odds with themselves. True West explores the concept of authenticity as it is used to invent, test, advertise, and read the West. The fifteen essays collected here apply contemporary critical and cultural theory to western literary history, Native American literature and identities, the visual West, and the imagining of place. Ranging geographically from the Canadian Prairies to Buena Park?s Entertainment Corridor in Southern California, and chronologically from early tourist narratives to contemporary environmental writing, True West challenges many assumptions we make about western writing and opens the door to an important new chapter in western literary history and cultural criticism.
