This book incorporates literary works, testimonies, autobiographies, women's resistance movements, and films that add to the conversation on the resilience of women in the global south. The essays question historical accuracy and politics of representation that usually undermine women's role during conflict, and they reevaluate how women participated, challenged, sacrificed, and vehemently opposed war discourses that work on obliterating women's role in shaping resistance movements.

A stunning autobiographical account of the fight for freedom in Ho Chi Min's Vietnam.

Although it seems almost incredible today, the United States had relatively little interest in the Middle East before 1945. But the dynamics and outcome of World War II elevated the importance of the Middle East in the American mind, and the United States has viewed the region with vital interest to its security and economy ever since. The projection of American power into the region has had consequences that have forever changed the United States and the Middle East, with the rise of al Qaeda and the turbulent occupation of Iraq being the latest examples. Crisis and Crossfire surveys and analyzes the broad contours of U.S. involvement in the region. It probes the reasons why the United States implemented various policies and assesses the wisdom of American leaders as they accepted greater responsibilities for preserving stability and security in the Middle East. Major themes include U.S.-Middle East policy in the context of the Cold War, the rise of Arab and Iranian nationalism, decolonization, the U.S. approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the politics of Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and America's military interventions, particularly its two wars against Iraq. This book's concise narrative and selection of primary-source documents make it an ideal introduction to U.S.-Middle East relations for students and for anyone with an interest in understanding the history behind today's events.

As media reports declare crisis after crisis in public education, Americans find themselves hotly debating educational inequalities that seem to violate their nation's ideals. Why does success in school track so closely with race and socioeconomic status? How to end these apparent achievement gaps? In the Crossfire brings historical perspective to these debates by tracing the life and work of Marcus Foster, an African American educator who struggled to reform urban schools in the 1960s and early 1970s. As a teacher, principal, and superintendent—first in his native Philadelphia and eventually in Oakland, California—Foster made success stories of urban schools and children whom others had dismissed as hopeless, only to be assassinated in 1973 by the previously unknown Symbionese Liberation Army in a bizarre protest against an allegedly racist school system. Foster's story encapsulates larger social changes in the decades after World War II: the great black migration from South to North, the civil rights movement, the decline of American cities, and the ever-increasing emphasis on education as a ticket to success. Well before the accountability agenda of the No Child Left Behind Act or the rise of charter schools, Americans came into sharp conflict over urban educational failure, with some blaming the schools and others pointing to conditions in homes and neighborhoods. By focusing on an educator who worked in the trenches and had a reputation for bridging divisions, In the Crossfire sheds new light on the continuing ideological debates over race, poverty, and achievement. Foster charted a course between the extremes of demanding too little and expecting too much of schools as agents of opportunity in America. He called for accountability not only from educators but also from families, taxpayers, and political and economic institutions. His effort to mobilize multiple constituencies was a key to his success—and a lesson for educators and policymakers who would take aim at achievement gaps without addressing the full range of school and nonschool factors that create them.

"Why has the valley of Kashmir, famed for its beauty and tranquillity, become a major flashpoint, threatening the stability of a region of great strategic importance and challenging the integrity of the Indian state? This book examines the Kashmir conflict in its historical context, from the period when the valley was an independent kingdom right up to the struggles of the present day. Located on the borders of China, Central Asia and the Sub-Continent, the insurgency in the valley has also created serious tensions between India and Pakistan. Drawing upon research in India and Pakistan, as well as historical sources, this book traces the origins of the state in the 19th century and the controversial "sale" by the British of the predominantly Muslim valley to a Hindu Maharaja in 1846. Through an exploration of the implications for Kashmir of independence in 1947, it gives a critical account of why, for Kashmir, self-determination may seem a more attractive option than affiliation to a larger multi-racial whole."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

This gripping historical novel is set on the tiny island of Saipan, which the Japanese had long governed, near the end of World War II. Thirteen-year-old Joseph, the son of a local village chief, and his half-Japanese best friend, Kento, have their loyalties tested when U.S. troops arrive and one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific war is fought. Caught in the crossfire between the Americans and Japanese, the boys learn what it really means to be a warrior. The novel is based on historical facts, and an afterword describes the real-life account of what happened on Saipan—the unimaginable horrors of what is now called Suicide Cliff.