Le voyage était presque parfait

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Harriet Martineau

"This new abridgement of the original 1838 edition offers a view of Jacksonian America. Here are Martineau's condemnation of slavery and her championship of abolition and women's rights; her incisive portraits of Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Garrison, Emerson, and the Beechers; her observations of American schools, asylums, colleges, and prisons; and her eyewitness accounts of a presidential assassination attempt, a lynch mob, a slave auction, a Quaker wedding, and a Harvard commencement. Historian Daniel Feller, author of The Jacksonian Promise, introduces the narrative, identifies the major characters, and provides an index for easy use."--BOOK JACKET.

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Patcharin Lapanun

Globalization has opened up a flow of economic and cultural exchanges. While we often think about these concepts in terms of trade policies or international treaties, they also play out in more intimate spheres, such as transnational marriages. Northeast Thailand has seen an increase in marriages between Thai women and farang (Western) men. Often the women are less well off and from rural areas in the country, while the men largely come from the United States and Europe and settle permanently in Thailand. These unions have created a new social class, with distinctive consumption patterns and lifestyles. And they are challenging gender relations and local perceptions of sexuality, marriage, and family. In Love, Money and Obligation, Patcharin Lapanun offers an exploration of these marriages and their larger effect on Thai communities. Her interviews with women and men engaging in these transnational relationships highlight the complexities of the associations, as they are shaped by love, money, and gender obligations on the one hand and the dynamics of socio-cultural and historical contexts on the other. Her in-depth and even-handed examination highlights the importance of women's agency and the strength and creativity of people seeking to forge meaningful lives in the processes of social transition and in the face of local and global encounters.

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John Taylor Gatto

"A Different Kind of Teacher brings together sixteen key essays and talks produced by Gatto between 1990 and 1999. Part One: Schoolrooms Speak Bluntly, includes three pieces written while he was still an active classroom teacher, and a short article written by one of his students, offering a glimpse at how Gatto translated his ideas about true education into the school setting." "Part Two: Analyzing the System includes seven pieces written in the period after Gatto's resignation from public school teaching. They represent a critique of American schooling, filled with insights gleaned from three decades in the classroom combined with years of research into the history and philosophy of Western education." "Part Three: The Search for Meaning, describes some of the results of Gatto's search for the purposes and goals of education and life. Although this section comes last in the book, the effort it records comes first in any serious exploration of what and how we teach our children." "In A Different Kind of Teacher, John Gatto opens readers' eyes to what the American system of education really is, what it ought to be, and what steps can be taken to reach that goal."--Jacket.

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Stuart Stevens

The author describes his experiences traveling with three companions from Beijing to India via Kashgar in order to retrace the route followed by Peter Fleming in 1936.