John Stauber founded the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Media & Democracy and its news magazine PR Watch in 1993. He has since served as the Center’s executive director and has co-authored six books, including the 2003 New York Times bestseller Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq.

Common Courage’s number one seller blows the lid off of today’s multi-billion-dollar propaganda-for-hire PR industry, revealing how public relations wizards concoct and spin the news, organize phony “grassroots” front groups, spy on citizens and conspire with lobbyists and politicians.
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Alisa Solomon is a writer, teacher and dramaturg based in New York City. A Professor of English/Journalism at Baruch College-City University of New York and of Theater and English at the CUNY Graduate Center for many years, she is currently on the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

The Queerest Art is a pioneering collection of essays by and conversations among a diverse range of leading theater academics and artists. The Queerest Art rereads the history of performance as a celebration and critique of dissident sexualities, exploring the politics of pleasure and the pleasure of politics that drive the theater. Lively and accessible, The Queerest Art will be useful to scholars, students, artists, and theater-goers alike interested in what makes queer theater . . . and what makes theater queer.
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Written in clear and lively prose, Re-Dressing the Canon is a collection of related essays that consider the relationship between gender and performance in canonical texts and contemporary productions. The essays engage current debates in feminism and queer theory, and ultimately reject Lacanian psychoanalysis as the best lens through which to study theatre. Alisa Solomon offers a new technique for studying theatre that focuses on reading texts theatrically. With its fresh look at theatre from Aristophanes to Split Britches, Re-Dressing the Canon is a terrific book for anyone interested in theatre.
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Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, is the author of many books, including Earth Democracy, Water Wars, and Staying Alive.

This work lays out, in practical steps and far-reaching concepts, a program to ensure food and agriculture become more socially and ecologically sustainable. The book harvests the work and ideas produced by thousands of communities around the world. Emerging from the historic gatherings at Terra Madre, farmers, traders, and activists diagnose and offer prescriptions to reverse perhaps the worst food crisis faced in human history.
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While draught and desertification are intensifying around the world, corporations are aggressively converting free-flowing water into bottled profits. The water wars of the twenty-first century may match-or even surpass-the oil wars of the twentieth. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, Shiva exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world’s poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good.
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In this book, the renowned environmentalist and activist charts how corporate control of food and the globalization of agriculture are robbing millions of their livelihoods and their right to food, and the related impact this has on the environment and the quality and healthfulness of the foods we eat. Topics covered include genetically engineered seeds, patents on life, mad cows and sacred cows and the debate on shrimp farming. This inspiring book will possibly lead the debate about genetic engineering and commercial agriculture for some time to come.
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World-renowned physicist and activist Vandana Shiva boldly confronts the neoconservative Project for the New American Century with her own plan, describing what Earth democracy “could” look like, and outlining the bedrock principles for building living economies, living cultures, and living democracies.
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Dr. Vandana Shiva sees India in desperate crisis, facing potential nuclear conflict with Pakistan, the rise of fundamentalism within its own borders, and the very real threat of mass famine and economic enslavement of its citizens to the forces of globalization. In India on Fire, Shiva offers a critical analysis of the effects of globalization. This book, which brings together historical, philosophical, and scientific thought, is a succinct and worthy primer for anyone who wishes to understand the crises in India and Pakistan today.
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Biotechnology is the single most powerful bundle of new technologies currently under development. It is also the most intrusive and determinative technology relating to nature generally and the human body specifically. This Reader brings together some of the most important work from feminists and environmentalists critical of the headlong rush into what is likely to prove a technological minefield.
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Set in the context of a sophisticated critique of the privileged epistemological position achieved by modern science, whereby it both aspires to provide technological solutions for social and political problems while at the same time disclaiming responsibility for the new problems which it creates in its wake, the author looks to the future in an analysis of the new project to apply the latest Gene Revolution technology to India and warns of the further environmental and social damage which will ensue.
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In lucid and accessible fashion, Shiva examines the current threats to the planet’s biodiversity and the environmental and human consequences of its erosion and replacement by monocultural production. In a policy intervention of potentially great significance, she calls for a halt, at international as well as local level, to the aid and market incentives to both large-scale destruction of habitats where biodiversity thrives and the introduction of centralized, homogeneous systems of civilization.
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There is only one path, Vandana Shiva suggests, to survival and liberation for nature, women and men, and that is the ecological path of harmony, sustainability and diversity. She explores the unique place of women in the environment of India in particular, both as its saviors and as victims of maldevelopment. Her analysis is an innovative statement of the challenge that women in ecology movements are creating and she shows how their efforts constitute a non-violent and humanly inclusive alternative to the dominant paradigm of contemporary scientific and development thought.
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Cindy Sheehan, mother of the late Specialist Casey Sheehan, U.S. Army, is cofounder of Gold Star Families for Peace, an organization devoted to families who have lost loved ones in Iraq.

Peace Mom is the heartfelt and profoundly moving story of Cindy’s journey to activism. She recounts the dark days following Casey’s death, when it seemed her life would never have meaning again. Through days of rage, despair, laughter, and tears, Cindy has found ways to celebrate the life of her son Casey and give meaning to his death. Her story points the way to a future of peace and justice for the world and for our children. Heartrending and powerful, Peace Mom is at once an honest account of one woman’s triumph over loss and a clarion call to all those who wonder if they can make a difference.
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Sheehan here movingly recounts her first year of activism, sharing her thoughts and actions with readers for the first time in book form. Reflecting on war and peace, truth and accountability, she takes the Bush administration to task for its corruption and incompetence. Equal parts compelling memoir and call to action, Not One More Mother’s Child tells in Sheehan’s distinctive voice how historical events and personal tragedy transformed her from grieving mom to ardent activist.
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Cindy Sheehan is America’s loudest, clearest, and most articulate voice calling for an end to the U.S.-led wars now being waged around the world. This pamphlet is her voice. In this pamphlet Cindy shares her journey from private grief and despair, to public action and nonviolent civil disobedience. Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry David Thoreau, and Mahatma Ghandi, this pamphlet traces Cindy’s arc from being the mother of a fallen solider, to the mother of a falling nation. The text is a transcript of a conversation between Cindy Sheehan and Greg Ruggiero.
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Katherine Sender is an associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. She is also the producer, director, and editor of a number of documentaries, including “Off the Straight and Narrow: Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Television” (1998), and “Further Off the Straight and Narrow: New Gay Visibility on Television” (2006).

In a hard-hitting book that refutes conventional wisdom, Katherine Sender explores the connection between the business of marketing to gay consumers and the politics of gay rights and identity. She disputes some marketers’ claims that marketing appeals to gay and lesbian consumers are a matter of “business, not politics” and that the business of gay marketing can be considered independently of the politics of gay rights, identity, and visibility.
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Edward Said was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University for many years. Said was best known for his influential books Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. As an activist, Said was a staunch supporter of Palestine.

In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said’s immense erudition and interpretive audacity are brought to bear on a variety of literatures, reanimating the terms of his title and discovering, in the process, how some of the most revered cultural productions call upon the same energies that go into the building of empires.
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The Edward Said Reader showcases the intellectual development of Said’s writing over the past 32 years. Condensing the most salient aspects of his works, the collection gives the reader a sense of the remarkable scope, the critical rhythms, the intellectual affinities, and the sheer strength of Said’s criticism.
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The noted Palestinian critic examines the way in which the West observes the Arabs.
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With his characteristically unflinching analysis and intelligence, Edward Said writes about the second intifada and about Bill Clinton’s misguided negotiations on the “Law of Return” for Palestinians, which he terms a kind of “fast-food peace” underscored by “malevolent sloppiness.” He discusses the breach of democracy in the last American presidential election and describes the Bush administration as hopeless in its allegiance to the Christian right and to the big oil companies.
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Based on years of research and extended visits to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (Joe Sacco conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine is the first major comics work of political nonfiction by Sacco, who has often been called the first comic book journalist and single-handedly pioneered the medium to universal acclaim. This new edition of Palestine also features a lengthy introduction by the outspoken political essayist and historian Edward Said.
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In his last collection of essays, one of the most highly regarded cultural critics of our time examines works produced by Strauss, Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett, and other artists at the end of their lives, and explains what the works say about the evolution of these artists.
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This text discusses the centrality of popular resistance in relation to culture, history, and social change. It reveals thoughts on the war on terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and lays out a vision for a secular, democratic future in the Middle East.
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Edward W. Said uses Joseph Conrad’s personal letters as a guide to understanding the author’s fiction, drawing an important parallel between Conrad’s view of his own life and the manner and form of his stories. Said also argues that the author, who set his fiction in exotic locations like East Asia and Africa, projects political dimensions in his work that mirror a colonialist preoccupation with “civilizing” native peoples. Said then suggests that this dimension should be considered when reading all of Western literature, signaling the beginnings of his groundbreaking work, Orientalism.
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In these twenty-eight interviews, Said addresses everything from Palestine to Pavarotti, from his nomadic upbringing under colonial rule to his politically active and often controversial adulthood, and reflects on Austen, Beckett, Conrad, Naipaul, Mahfouz, and Rushdie, as well as on fellow critics Bloom, Derrida, and Foucault. The passion Said feels for literature, music, history, and politics is powerfully conveyed in this indispensable complement to his prolific life’s work.
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Freud and the Non-European was written as a lecture in response to an invitation from the Freud Institute in Vienna. Under pressure from local Zionists, the institute publicly withdrew its invitation. The Freud Museum in London stepped in and Edward Said delivered the postponed lecture in December 2001. Using an impressive array of material from literature, archaeology and social theory, and demonstrating an abiding interest in Freud’s work and its influence on his own, Edward Said explores the profound implications in Moses and Monotheism for Middle-East politics today.
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This book demonstrates how the denial of truth about the Palestinians by governments and the media in the West has led to the current impasse in Middle East politics. The book attempts to redress a sustained crime against historical truth in order to make a more rational future possible.
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The US government has been in conflict with Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, and continues to patrol its skies and bomb its military sites almost weekly. Noam Chomsky and Edward W. Said’s in-depth analysis of the contradictions and consequences of U.S. foreign policy toward rogue states; U.S.-Arab relations; and how American military actions abroad often conflict with UN resolutions and international law.
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In the radically changed political atmosphere since September 11, 2001, the notion that cultures can harmoniously and fruitfully coexist seems like little more than a quaint fiction. Now, Edward Said argues that the answer may be a more democratic form of humanism–one that aims to incorporate, emancipate, and enlighten.
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As Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said range across music, literature, and society, they open up many fields of inquiry: the importance of a sense of place; music as a defiance of silence; the legacies of artists from Mozart and Beethoven to Dickens and Adorno; Wagner’s anti-Semitism; and the need for “artistic solutions” to the predicament of the Middle East–something they both witnessed when they brought young Arab and Israeli musicians together. Erudite, intimate, thoughtful and spontaneous, Parallels and Paradoxes is a virtuosic collaboration.
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Scott Ritter was one of the UN’s top weapons inspectors in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. Before working for the UN he served as an officer in the US Marines and as a ballistic missile adviser to General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf War. He lives in New York State.

Scott Ritter, former Marine and UN weapons inspector, argues that there is a growing despondency amongst the anti-war movement. Ritter proposes the anti-war movement seek guidance from sources they normally spurn — that one must study the “enemy” in order to learn the art of campaigning and of waging battles when necessary. They need to understand the pro-war movement’s decision-making cycle, then undertake a comprehensive course of action.
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In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Scott Ritter’s Iraq Confidential was embraced by the antiwar movement in America. His claims that Iraq had been effectively disarmed were ignored by both the Bush administration and the mainstream media. In the wake of the debacle, Ritter has been vindicated. Now Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector, has set his sights on the White House’s hyping of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. In Target Iran he once again sets the record straight. Target Iran is Ritter’s “national intelligence assessment” of the Iranian imbroglio. Ritter examines the Bush administration’s regime-change policy and the potential of Iran to threaten U.S. national security interests.
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Iraq Confidential charts the disillusionment of a staunch patriot who came to realize that his own government sought to undermine effective arms control in the Middle East. Ritter shows us a world of deceit and betrayal, in which nothing is as it seems. A host of characters from Mossad, MI6 and the CIA pepper this powerful narrative, which contains revelations that will permanently affect the ongoing debates about Iraq.
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Scott Ritter became a cause célèbre after he resigned in protest over UN and US policy relating to the arms inspection process in Iraq. In this analysis, he exposes the duplicity of UN and US government officials as they appeased Saddam Hussein, and reveals a bold new approach to ending the crisis.
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Kevin Powell is a critically acclaimed writer, lecturer, and activist. He is the author or editor of five previous books and a major contributor to the New York Times bestseller Tupac Shakur. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

In three mind-jolting essays by one of the most passionate and eloquent voices of his generation, Who’s Gonna Take the Weight? leads us to the heart of the searing issues facing us today, from manhood, violence, and gender oppression to celebrity culture and hip-hop. Using compelling personal stories as the connecting thread, he examines what this nation has become since the monumental upheavals of the 1960s and where it might be headed if we’re not careful.
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Powell assembles an exemplary collection of new black literary voices in this eclectic anthology.
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Powell skillfully dissects the dreams of American freedom and democracy in these early days of the 21st century. Be it the reelection of President George W. Bush, the colossal tragedy of September 11th and the policies and wars that have followed, or the historic destruction of the city of New Orleans before our very eyes, Powell tells us the uncomfortable truths about America, his country, and yours, too. These coolly observant essays, quilted together, firmly establish why Powell is widely considered one of America’s brightest leaders and thinkers.
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Driven by hip-hop music, popular culture, national and global events, and the specifics of his own life, Kevin Powell’s voice is one of the boldest and brightest in the 1990’s poetry renaissance. Passionate and witty, Powell’s poetry is filled with fly girls and lost loves, grandmothers and absent fathers. His poetry conveys the hope, anger and fear of a generation.
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Alvin Poussaint is Professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston. He lives in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint have a powerful message for families and communities as they lay out their visions for strengthening America, or for that matter the world. They address the crises of people who are stuck because of feelings of low self-esteem, abandonment, anger, fearfulness, sadness, and feelings of being used, undefended and unprotected. These feelings often impede their ability to move forward. The authors aim to help empower people to make the daunting transition from victims to victors. Come On, People is always engaging, and loaded with heart-piercing stories of the problems facing many communities.
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Through stories (including their own), interviews, and analysis of the most recent data available, Dr. Alvin Poussaint and journalist Amy Alexander offer a groundbreaking look at “posttraumatic slavery syndrome,” the unique physical and emotional perils for black people that are the legacy of slavery and persistent racism. They examine the historical, cultural, and social factors that make many blacks reluctant to seek health care, and cite ways that everyone from the layperson to the health care provider can help.
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Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African American Studies and Director of the Institute for Critical U.S. Studies at Duke University.

In Songs in the Key of Black Life, acclaimed cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal turns his attention to Rhythm and Blues. He argues that R&B-often dismissed as just a bunch of love songs, yet the second most popular genre in terms of sales-can tell us much about the dynamic joys, apprehensions, tensions, and contradictions of contemporary black life, if we listen closely. Songs in the Key of Black Life is a remarkable contribution to the study of black popular music, and valuable reading for anyone interested in how race is lived in America.
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From headlines to street corners, the message resounds: Black men are in crisis. But the crisis does not rest with at-risk youth of the hip-hop generation or men on the down low alone. In this provocative new book, acclaimed cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal argues that the Strong Black Man—an ideal championed by generations of African American civic leaders–may be at the heart of problems facing black men today. Part memoir, part manifesto, this book celebrates the black man of our times in all his vibrancy and virility. This impassioned tribute to a new face on the horizon of black America is not to be missed.
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In Soul Babies, Mark Anthony Neal explains the complexities and contradictions of black life and culture after the end of the Civil Rights era. He traces the emergence of what he calls a “post-soul aesthetic,” a transformation of values that marked a profound change in African American thought and experience. Lively and provocative, this book offers a valuable new way of thinking about black popular culture and the legacy of the sixties.
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What the Music Said is a book about communities under siege, but also communities engaged in various forms of resistance, institution-building and everyday pleasures. Beginning with the Be-Bop era, Mark Anthony Neal reads the story of “black communities” through the black tradition in popular music. Exploring the broad range of black cultural experience and expression, Neal locates a history that challenges the view that hip-hop was the first black cultural movement to “speak truth to power.”
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