AIDS and Accusation

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Stephen Lovell

Almost twenty years after the Soviet Union's end, what are we to make of its existence? Was it a heroic experiment, an unmitigated disaster, or a viable if flawed response to the modern world? What was the Soviet Union like? How did it evolve over seven decades? What was the relationship between the regime and the general population? This introduction blends political history with an investigation into the society and culture at the time. The author examines aspects of patriotism, mass culture, political violence, poverty, and ideology; and provides answers to some of the big questions about the Soviet experience.

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Judith N. Zur

This local study of the impact of political violence on a Maya Indian village is based on intensive fieldwork in the department of El Quiche, Guatemala, during 1988-1990. It examines the processes of fragmentation and realignment in a community undergoing rapid and violent change and relates local, social, cultural, and psychological phenomena to the impact of the war on widows' lives. Zur combines a narrative, life-history approach with anthropological analysis, emphasizing the way people talk about and explain the violence. She describes the survival strategies of widows and their attempts to reconstruct their lives, both on a physical level and in terms of meaning, and finds that "remembering" is not simply the automatic engagement of the past within the present, but a process that allows widows to discover new possibilities for action and for reshaping their own positions in society.

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Jabari Asim

"Asim disrupts what Toni Morrison [calls] the 'master narrative' and replaces it with a story of black survival and persistence through art and community in the face of centuries of racism. In eight ... essays, he explores such topics as the twisted legacy of jokes and falsehoods in black life; the importance of black fathers and community; the significance of black writers and stories; and the beauty and pain of the black body"--Front flap.

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Jeff Gow and Chris Desmond

This book draws together the latest statistics and analyses on the impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the children of South Africa and provides a comprehensive discussion of current interventions and their effectiveness to address the situation.