Reviews : Books
A Geography of Time: A Review - Sunday, 31 December 2006 - 12:00 PM
A Geography of Time, by Robert Levine, discusses time as few may have previously considered it in their daily pursuits. Through personal experience, via a sabbatical, Levine offers keen insights into the rhythms of life as experienced by peoples and places the world over.

Reviews : Books
Awakening to Zero Point: A Review - Sunday, 31 December 2006 - 12:00 PM
"Everyone feels it. Something has changed – something feels different now, during these days."  With these words, Gregg Braden opens his controversial first book, Awakening to Zero Point: The Collective Initiation .  Braden, a one-time geologist, computer systems designer, and technical operations specialist for such diverse firms as Phillips Petroleum, Martin-Marietta, and Cisco Systems, whose own personal research on ancient mystical texts and sacred sites led to the publication of this book, now writes and speaks full time.

Reviews : Books
Disposable People: A Review - Sunday, 31 December 2006 - 12:00 PM
Disposable People, by Kevin Bales, presents in disturbing and often uncomfortable detail what he labels as "new slavery" within the global framework of capitalism. Having traveled to Thailand, Mauritania, Brazil, Pakistan and India Bales illustrates for readers the dire conditions in which his respondents live and toil day after day. When discussing the new slavery, Bales points to four elements that allow for its persistence: Slaves are cheap and disposable; Control continues without legal ownership; Slavery is hidden behind contracts; Slavery flourishes in communities under stress. According to Bales, with these conditions in place, a way of life for 27 million people (conservative by his estimates) around the world is strengthened.

Reviews : Books
Domestica: A Review - Sunday, 31 December 2006 - 12:00 PM
In Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo's Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadow of Affluence, readers explore, along with the researcher, an oft overlooked element of domestic labour in America. In examining this particular manifestation between the haves and have little, Hondagneu-Sotelo has provided a "scholarly" treatment where Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed fell short. This is by no means an indictment of Ehrenreich's work, quite the contrary.

Reviews : Books
Equality of the Human Races: A Review - Sunday, 31 December 2006 - 12:00 PM
Joseph Antenor Firmin (1850-1911) published The Equality of the Human Races , his "positivist" tome, in 1885 as a scientific rebuttal to Arthur de Gobineau's "Inequality of the Human Races." De Gobineau and other architects of "scientific" racism of the 19th century served as the targets of Firmin's address to their problematic perceptions of Africans/Blacks the world over.