In the tradition of Frank Browning's The Culture of Desire comes Guy Kettelhack's provocative, honest, unapologetic look at the sex lives of gay men. Dancing Around the Volcano is essential reading for the American gay community. Gay men have long been told that regardless of their individual characters and desires, they should aspire to a monogamous model in their romantic and sexual relationships. Now, Guy Kettelhack wants to "tell the truth about the sex gay men are really having," offering a path to sexual liberation that embraces the conflicts and paradoxes of sex. Using the voices of different men who tell of their experiences, Kettelhack questions the assumptions about the "pathology" of promiscuity, sexual compulsion, prostitution, sadomasochism, fetishes, and celibacy. These personal stories are often sexy, sometimes funny, almost always poignant in their honesty, and startling in their insights. We hear about everything from hustling to monogamous gay relationships, from the baths to the private bedroom, from fisting to French-kissing. What emerges is a sex-positive take on the whole gamut of gay male sexual behavior. Celebrating the ingenuity with which gay men manage their sexual and aggressive drives and fantasies, Dancing Around the Volcano is a passionately pro-sex book with potentially healing--even revolutionary--implications for everyone: gay or straight, male or female.

Dance on the Volcano tells the story of two sisters growing up during the Haitian Revolution in a culture that swings heavily between decadence and poverty, sensuality and depravity. One sister, because of her singing ability, is able to enter into the white colonial society otherwise generally off limits to people of color. Closely examining a society sagging under the white supremacy of the French colonist rulers, Dance on the Volcano is one of only novels to closely depict the seeds and fruition of the Haitian Revolution, tracking an elaborate hierarchy of skin color and class through the experiences of two young women. It is a story about hatred and fear, love and loss, and the complex tensions between colonizer and colonized, masterfully translated by Kaiama L. Glover.

This book is an informative and well written piece of research on a contemporary issues of major interest to the United States. . . . Most highly recommended. La Red/The Net Provides in one place a well written survey of the problem of the drug trade in the Americas, especially on the socio-economic and political aspects of the phenomena. The book will serve as a useful resource to persons working in Latin American drug trade. Caribbean Review This short book is an excellent introduction to the complicated history and turbulent present-day status of illegal drugs in several Latin American neighborhoods. National Catholic News Service This provocative, informative book explores what is rapidly becoming a major obstacle in inter-American relations. Despite the common problems created by increasing drug addiction and drug-related violence, each side continues to blame the other for the deepening crisis. There is, MacDonald states emphatically, enough blame to go around for everyone. He puts the Latin American drug trade in much-needed perspective, providing both historical backgrund and insight on the contemporary political ramifications of drug trafficking. Because the drug trade is an inter-American phenomenon, the solution to it will have to be a joint one. Among the problems that will have to be faced, according to the author, are Cuba's role as an active middleman in the drug trade, the U.S. market for illegal drugs, the impact of the drug trade on U.S. policy in the region, and the interrelationship of the drug problem to the Latin Americn debt crisis. He warns that there will be no quick victories in the war on drugs in Latin America and the strategies used must attack both supply and demand. Whatever the approach used, its success or failure will depend on the ability of both the United Stataes and the Latin American nations to contain the drugs-insurgence nexus and to deal with the increasingly political nature of the drug trade.

Set in 18th century Naples, based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his celebrated wife Emma, and Lord Nelson, and peopled with many of the great figures of the day, this unconventional, bestselling historical romance from the National Book Award-winning author of In America touches on themes of sex and revolution, the fate of nature, art and the collector's obsessions, and, above all, love.

Once inseparable, the Michelet sisters were driven apart by war and by the men they married: a German aristocrat who loved his country and a British diplomat working alongside Churchill in the Cabinet War Rooms. Laila Embelton describes the extraordinary lives of her mother and aunt in a moving story that spans two world wars and four continents.

Dance is more than an aesthetic of life – dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.