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  • Book cover of When Abortion Was a Crime

    As we approach the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it's crucial to look back to the time when abortion was illegal. Leslie J. Reagan traces the practice and policing of abortion, which although illegal was nonetheless widely available, but always with threats for both doctor and patient. In a time when many young women don't even know that there was a period when abortion was a crime, this work offers chilling and vital lessons of importance to everyone. The linking of the words "abortion" and "crime" emphasizes the difficult and painful history that is the focus of Reagan's important book. Her study is the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with Roe v. Wade in 1973. Although illegal, millions of abortions were provided during these years to women of every class, race, and marital status. The experiences and perspectives of these women, as well as their physicians and midwives, are movingly portrayed here. Reagan traces the practice and policing of abortion. While abortions have been typically portrayed as grim "back alley" operations, she finds that abortion providers often practiced openly and safely. Moreover, numerous physicians performed abortions, despite prohibitions by the state and the American Medical Association. Women often found cooperative practitioners, but prosecution, public humiliation, loss of privacy, and inferior medical care were a constant threat. Reagan's analysis of previously untapped sources, including inquest records and trial transcripts, shows the fragility of patient rights and raises provocative questions about the relationship between medicine and law. With the right to abortion again under attack in the United States, this book offers vital lessons for every American concerned with health care, civil liberties, and personal and sexual freedom.

  • Book cover of Under the Magnolias
    T.I. Lowe

     · 2021

    2022 Christy Award finalist! This night not only marked the end to the drought, but also the end to the long-held secret we’d kept hidden under the magnolias. Magnolia, South Carolina, 1980 Austin Foster is barely a teenager when her mama dies giving birth to twins, leaving her to pick up the pieces while holding her six siblings together and doing her best to stop her daddy from retreating into his personal darkness. Scratching out a living on the family’s tobacco farm is as tough as it gets. When a few random acts of kindness help to ease the Fosters’ hardships, Austin finds herself relying upon some of Magnolia’s most colorful citizens for friendship and more. But it’s next to impossible to hide the truth about the goings-on at Nolia Farms, and Austin’s desperate attempts to save face all but break her. Just when it seems she might have something more waiting for her—with the son of a wealthy local family who she’s crushed on for years—her father makes a choice that will crack wide-open the family’s secrets and lead to a public reckoning. There are consequences for loving a boy like Vance Cumberland, but there is also freedom in the truth. T. I. Lowe’s gritty yet tender and uplifting coming-of-age tale reminds us that a great story can break your heart . . . then heal it in the best possible way. Features of Under the Magnolias include Clean Christian romance Discussion questions for book groups Playlist inspired by the book

  • Book cover of Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance

    Canada is regularly presented as a country where liberalism has ensured freedom and equality for all. Yet as Canada expanded westward and colonized First Nations territories, liberalism did not operate to advance freedom or equality for Indigenous people or protect their property. In reality it had a markedly debilitating effect on virtually every aspect of their lives. This book explores the operation of exclusionary liberalism between 1877 and 1927 in southern Alberta and the southern interior of British Columbia. In order to facilitate and justify liberal colonial expansion, Canada relied extensively on surveillance, which operated to exclude and reform Indigenous people. By persisting in Anglo-Canadian liberal capitalist values, structures, and interests as normal, natural, and beyond reproach, it worked to exclude or restructure the economic, political, social, and spiritual tenets of Indigenous cultures. Further surveillance identified which previously reserved lands, established on fragments of First Nations territory, could be further reduced by a variety of dubious means. While none of this preceded unchallenged, surveillance served as well to mitigate against, even if it could never completely neutralize, opposition.

  • Book cover of The Home Team
    Roy MacGregor

     · 2015

    Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award “A truly magnificent book.” —Calgary Herald It’s the great Canadian icon: a frozen creek, a backyard rink, a father passing something precious on to his child—the love of a game. There is nothing quite so Canadian as hockey, and nothing quite so evocative in hockey as the relationships between Canadian hockey players and their fathers. Here are the personal tales of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey and Marty McSorley, told as the four NHL stars take their fathers on a hockey tour of Europe. Here are the memories of hockey’s grand families: Gordie, Mark and Travis Howe; Bill, Kevin and Gord Dineen; Murray, Ken and Michael Dryden. Here is Brett Hull’s story of the famous father who was never home. But The Home Team is about more than famous names. It is the story of the father and son left weeping in the stands at the end of a disappointing draft day. It is the story of a minor league coach and his house league son. This book is about hockey. It is also about where we live and who we are: a book for all fathers and sons in Canada.

  • Book cover of Creatures of Empire

    When we think of the key figures of early American history, we think of explorers, or pilgrims, or Native Americans--not cattle, or goats, or swine. But as Virginia DeJohn Anderson reveals in this brilliantly original account of colonists in New England and the Chesapeake region, livestock played a vitally important role in the settling of the New World. Livestock, Anderson writes, were a central factor in the cultural clash between colonists and Indians as well as a driving force in the expansion west. By bringing livestock across the Atlantic, colonists believed that they provided the means to realize America's potential. It was thought that if the Native Americans learned to keep livestock as well, they would be that much closer to assimilating the colonists' culture, especially their Christian faith. But colonists failed to anticipate the problems that would arise as Indians began encountering free-ranging livestock at almost every turn, often trespassing in their cornfields. Moreover, when growing populations and an expansive style of husbandry required far more space than they had expected, colonists could see no alternative but to appropriate Indian land. This created tensions that reached the boiling point with King Philip's War and Bacon's Rebellion. And it established a pattern that would repeat time and again over the next two centuries. A stunning account that presents our history in a truly new light, Creatures of Empire restores a vital element of our past, illuminating one of the great forces of colonization and the expansion westward.

  • Book cover of American Women and Flight since 1940

    “Individual women’s stories enliven almost every page” of this comprehensive illustrated reference, now updated, from the National Air and Space Museum (Technology and Culture). Women run wind tunnel experiments, direct air traffic, and fabricate airplanes. American women have been involved with flight from the beginning. But until 1940, most people believed women could not fly, that Amelia Earhart was an exception to the rule. World War II changed everything. “It is on the record that women can fly as well as men,” stated General Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces. Then the question became “Should women fly?” Deborah G. Douglas tells the story of this ongoing debate and its impact on American history. From Jackie Cochran, whose perseverance led to the formation of the Women’s Army Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II to the more recent achievements of Jeannie Flynn, the Air Force’s first woman fighter pilot and Eileen Collins, NASA’s first woman shuttle commander, Douglas introduces a host of determined women who overcame prejudice and became military fliers, airline pilots, and air and space engineers. Not forgotten are stories of flight attendants, air traffic controllers, and mechanics. American Women and Flight since 1940 is a revised and expanded edition of a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum reference work. Long considered the single best reference work in the field, this new edition contains extensive new illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography.

  • Book cover of Uganda's White Man of Work
  • Book cover of Research, Action and Policy: Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate Change

    Research, Action and Policy: Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate Change presents the voices of women from every continent, women who face vastly different climate events and challenges. The book heralds a new way of understanding climate change that incorporates gender justice and human rights for all.

  • Book cover of The Politics of Violence in Latin America

    Latin America is one of the most violent regions in the world. It has suffered waves of repressive authoritarian rule, organized armed insurgency and civil war, violent protest, and ballooning rates of criminal violence. But is violence hard wired into Latin America? This is a critical reassessment of the ways in which violence in Latin America is addressed and understood. Previous approaches have relied on structural perspectives, attributing the problem of violence to Latin America's colonial past or its conflictual contemporary politics. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, this volume argues that violence is often rooted more in contingent outcomes than in deeply embedded structures. Addressing topics ranging from the root sources of violence in Haiti to kidnapping in Colombia, from the role of property rights in patterns of violence to the challenges of peacebuilding, The Politics of Violence in Latin America is an essential step towards understanding the causes and contexts of violence-and changing the mechanisms that produce it.

  • Book cover of Petrus Romanus

    According to the prophecy of "the last Pope" takes from St. Malachy's "Prophecy of the Popes, " the Pope who follow Pope Benedict XVI will be the false prophet who leads the world's religious communities into embracing the political leader known as the Antichrist. Learn how the Vatician is tied to the Mayan 2012 prophecy; the fourth secret of Fatima; and the Enthronement of Lucifer at the Vatican.