"The Maya have faced innumerable and constant challenges to their cultural identities in the last 500 years, from the subjugation of the contact and colonial periods, to the brutality of state-sponsored violence in Guatemala and the introduction of new global technologies. Oral tradition plays a fundamental role among the contemporary Maya as a means to record history and resist oppression. Although scholars have examined the processes of resistance and identity in different spheres, The Faces of Resistance: Maya Heroes, Power, and Identity is the first to unpack the importance of heroes as a cornerstone of Maya cultural and political resistance. This collection of essays by leading scholars explores how Maya communities draw on stories of indigenous heroes as an empowering cultural memory and a way to connect with the legacy of their extraordinary past. In particular, this volume considers how the Maya, following centuries of persecution and marginalization, use historical knowledge to generate and fortify their indigenous identities. The analysis of Maya heroes presented in this volume reveals that narratives of hero figures help the Maya to re-connect with an understanding of their history that has survived centuries of oppression and legitimize the practices, beliefs, and morality that will define their future"--

“Concise, clear and convincing. . . a vision for the country as a whole.” —James Fallows, The New York Times Book Review A leading sociologist's brilliant and revelatory argument that the future of politics, work, immigration, and more may be found in California Once upon a time, any mention of California triggered unpleasant reminders of Ronald Reagan and right-wing tax revolts, ballot propositions targeting undocumented immigrants, and racist policing that sparked two of the nation's most devastating riots. In fact, California confronted many of the challenges the rest of the country faces now—decades before the rest of us. Today, California is leading the way on addressing climate change, low-wage work, immigrant integration, overincarceration, and more. As white residents became a minority and job loss drove economic uncertainty, California had its own Trump moment twenty-five years ago, but has become increasingly blue over each of the last seven presidential elections. How did the Golden State manage to emerge from its unsavory past to become a bellwether for the rest of the country? Thirty years after Mike Davis's hellish depiction of California in City of Quartz, the award-winning sociologist Manuel Pastor guides us through a new and improved California, complete with lessons that the nation should heed. Inspiring and expertly researched, State of Resistance makes the case for honestly engaging racial anxiety in order to address our true economic and generational challenges, a renewed commitment to public investments, the cultivation of social movements and community organizing, and more.

Winner of The 2020 Best Book Award for Military History -- American Bookfest An elite platoon of Marine Scout-Snipers, Lieutenant Frank Tachovsky’s “40 Thieves” were chosen for their willingness to defy rules and beat all-comers. When two Marines got into a fight, the loser ended up in the infirmary, the winner in the brig. Tachovsky wanted the winner on his team—a brush with military law was a recommendation. These full-blooded men were trained in a ruthless array of hand-to-hand killing techniques and then thrown into the battle for Saipan—Emperor Hirohito’s “Treasure” and the bulwark of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific—where they would wreak havoc in and around, but mostly behind, enemy lines. They witnessed inhuman atrocities; walked into an ambush after the cunning Japanese used wounded Marines as bait; endured body-punishing extremes of heat, hunger, and thirst; fought a relentless enemy who would not surrender; and watched best friends die. Now Tachovsky’s son Joseph tells their remarkable story—a story he didn’t even know until after his father’s death—reported from an extensive documentary record, including priceless mementos his father kept, and from exhaustive interviews with survivors who served under Lieutenant “Ski.” This is how America won the war in the Pacific, where “uncommon valor was a common virtue.” 40 Thieves on Saipan: The Elite Marine Scout-Snipers in One of World War II’s Bloodiest Battles is true history. It’s also an adventure you don’t want to miss.

In an age when large corporations dominate the economic and political landscape, it is tempting to think that their power goes largely unchecked. Originally published in 2007, Contesting the Corporation counters this view by showing that today's corporations are driven by political struggle, power plays and attempts to resist control. Building on a wide range of theoretical sources, Fleming and Spicer present an analysis of the different ways in which power operates within the modern workplace. They begin by building a theoretical perspective that synthesizes previous investigations of power and resistance, identifying struggle as a key concept. Each chapter illustrates a different dimension of workplace struggle through an array of original empirical studies relating to sexuality, cynicism, new social movements and new-wave trade unionism. The book concludes by demonstrating that social justice claims underlie even the most innocuous forms of resistance, helping to transform some of the largest modern corporations.

Chancellor Rieger is leaving office. But does leaving office necessarily mean that he, his mistress and his extended family have to leave the state villa, which has been their home for years? While his former secretary, and the former secretary to his former secretary, grapple with the mechanics of change and his family prepare to vace an uncertain future, the chancellor himself considers his legacy amid visits from journalists, an infatuated student and his arch-rival and possible successor, Patrick Klein. With echoes of both King Lear and The Cherry Orchard, Vaclav Havel's Leaving addresses the themes of change, dispossession and the transfer of power from one generation to the next. The play received its English-language world premiere at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, in September 2008. Leaving is Vaclav Havel's first play since he was propelled to political office in 1989.

WINNER OF: Frantz Fanon Outstanding Book from the Caribbean Philosophical Association Canadian Political Science Association’s C.B. MacPherson Prize Studies in Political Economy Book Prize Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. The term “recognition” shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples’ right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics—one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism. Coulthard demonstrates how a “place-based” modification of Karl Marx’s theory of “primitive accumulation” throws light on Indigenous–state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon’s critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time. This framework strengthens his exploration of the ways that the politics of recognition has come to serve the interests of settler-colonial power. In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization.