A fist in the hornet's nest

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Xiaomei Chen

In the first comprehensive study of Occidentalism in post-Mao China, Xiaomei Chen offers an insightful account of the unremittingly favorable depiction of Western culture and its negative characterization of Chinese culture in post-Mao China from 1978-1988. She examines the cultural and political interrelations between the East and West from a vantage point more complex than that accommodated by most current theories of Western imperialism and colonialism. Going beyond Edward Said's construction in Orientalism of cross-cultural appropriations as a defining facet of Western imperialism, Chen argues that the appropriation of Western discourse - what she calls "Occidentalism" - can actually have a politically and ideologically liberating effect on contemporary non-Western culture. She maintains that simplistic allegations of Orientalism frequently found in current critical discourses seriously underestimate the complexities of intercultural and multicultural relationships. Occidentalism presents a new model of comparative literary and cultural studies that reenvisions cross-cultural appropriation. It will be indispensable to future discussions of Orientalism, Occidentalism, and postcolonialism, as well as subaltern studies, Asian studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, and non-Western drama.

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Olayiwola Abegunrin

In this twenty-first century, Africa has become an important source of the United States energy imports and the world's natural resources. It has also become the epicenter of the worlds deadly health epidemic, HIV/AIDS, and one of the battlegrounds in the fight against terrorism. With Nigeria and South Africa leading the continent, Africa has become a major player to be reckoned with in the global affairs.-- PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION.

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Johan Östling

"As a nominally neutral power during the Second World War, Sweden in the early postwar era has received comparatively little attention from historians. Nonetheless, as this definitive study shows, the war--and particularly the specter of Nazism--changed Swedish society profoundly. Prior to 1939, many Swedes shared an unmistakable affinity for German culture, and even after the outbreak of hostilities there remained prominent apologists for the Third Reich. After the Allied victory, however, Swedish intellectuals reframed Nazism as a discredited, distinctively German phenomenon rooted in militarism and Romanticism. Accordingly, Swedes' self-conception underwent a dramatic reformulation. From this interplay of suppressed traditions and bright dreams for the future, postwar Sweden emerged"--From publisher's website.

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Coleman Young and Lonnie Wheeler

In his sophisticated, savvy, charismatic, fifty-year career, Mayor Coleman Young has been called many things, and one of them is the most powerful black politician in American history. His account of his epic journey from "Big Time Red" on the Prohibition streets of Detroit to five terms as the city's mayor looks back on decades of activity paralleling every modern African-American movement. Young's family moved from Alabama to Detroit's Black Bottom in the early twenties. He was an officer in a barely integrated army, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen who called for Eleanor Roosevelt's support when he and fellow black officers were suffering under army Jim Crow laws. He was a labor activist intimately involved in the alliance of white and black workers in the union movement of the thirties and forties. And he was an urban leader who struggled to bring solvency and self-respect to Motor City. His life abounds in colorful anecdote and abrasive repartee. When he was harassed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, his response was: "I consider the activities of this Committee as un-American. . This radical visionary and his metropolis are a metaphor for our society. His family history is the territory of Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land. His eloquence and political passion recall The Autobiography of Malcolm X. His blueprint for the future of urban America is his own, and the problems he has confronted - crime, police harassment, white flight, unemployment - are ours.