Human Rights Day 2022: Dignity, Freedom, and Justice for All Posted on December 12th, 2022 by Abe Nemon

In the decades since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, human rights have become more recognised and more guaranteed across the globe. It has since served as the foundation for an expanding system of human rights protection that today focuses also on vulnerable groups such as persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and migrants.

However, the promise of the UDHR, of dignity and equality in rights, has been under a sustained assault in recent years. As the world faces challenges new and ongoing – pandemics, conflicts, exploding inequalities, morally bankrupt global financial system, racism, climate change – the values, and rights enshrined in the UDHR provide guideposts for our collective actions that do not leave anyone behind.

• We the People : the 500-year battle over who is American by Benjamin Railton

  Call Number: E184.A1 R337 2019

  ISBN: 9781538128541

  Publication Date: 2019-07-31

  “‘We the People.’ The Constitution begins with those deceptively simple words, but how do Americans define that ‘We’? In We the People, Ben Railton argues that throughout our history two competing yet interconnected concepts have battled to define our national identity and community: exclusionary and inclusive visions of who gets to be an American. From the earliest moments of European contact with indigenous peoples, through the Revolutionary period’s debates on African American slavery, 19th century conflicts over Indian Removal, Mexican landowners, and Chinese immigrants, 20th century controversies around Filipino Americans and Japanese internment, and 21st century fears of Muslim Americans, time and again this defining battle has shaped our society and culture. Carefully exploring and critically examining those histories, and the key stories and figures they feature, is vital to understanding America—and to making sense of the Trump era, when the battle over who is an American can be found in every significant debate and moment.” – from the publisher

• The Second Founding : an introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment by Ilan Wurman

  Call Number: KF4558 14th .W87 2020

  ISBN: 9781108843157

  Publication Date: 2020-11-12

  “The standard public debate over the Fourteenth Amendment goes something like this. Critics of the Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment over the last several decades believe that the Court has used the Amendment’s provisions for ‘due process of law’ and ‘equal protection of the laws’ as open-ended vehicles for judicial policymaking, whether on abortion or gay marriage or a host of other issues. Indeed, it is difficult for someone sympathetic to the result in the 2015 gay marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges to read the Court’s opinion and get the feeling that what the Court is doing is law. The case was decided under the rather nebulous concept ‘substantive due process,’ the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment’s injunction that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law is not merely about process as its terms might suggest, but also about ‘substance’ namely, that the clause protects unwritten, unenumerated fundamental rights or prohibits arbitrary and oppressive legislation.” – from the publisher

• Making the Movement : how activists fought for civil rights with buttons, flyers, pins, and posters by David L. Crane; Silas Munro (Contribution by)

  Call Number: E185.61 .C736 2022

  ISBN: 9781648961083

  Publication Date: 2022-09-20

  “From Reconstruction through Jim Crow, through the protest era of the 1960s and ’70s, to current-day resistance and activism such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the material culture of the Civil Rights Movement has been integral to its goals and tactics. During decades of sit-ins, marches, legal challenges, political campaigns, boycotts, and demonstrations, objects such as buttons, flyers, pins, and posters have been key in the fight against racism, oppression, and violence. Making the Movement presents more than 200 of these nonviolent weapons alongside the stories of the activists, organizations, and campaigns that defined and propelled the cause of civil rights. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to learn about Black and African American history in the United States and about strategies to combat racism and the structures that support it.” – from the publisher

• Unbound : my story of liberation and the birth of the Me Too movement by Tarana Burke

  Call Number: Browsing HV6592 .B87 2021

  ISBN: 9781250621733

  Publication Date: 2021-09-14

  “From the founder and activist behind one of the largest movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the ‘Me too’ movement, Tarana Burke debuts a powerful memoir about her own journey to saying those two simple yet infinitely powerful words–me too–and how she brought empathy back to an entire generation in one of the largest cultural events in American history. Tarana didn’t always have the courage to say ‘me too.’ As a child, she reeled from her sexual assault, believing she was responsible. Unable to confess what she thought of as her own sins for fear of shattering her family, her soul split in two. One side was the bright, intellectually curious third generation Bronxite steeped in Black literature and power, and the other was the bad, shame-ridden girl who thought of herself as a vile rule breaker, not as a victim. She tucked one away, hidden behind a wall of pain and anger, which seemed to work…until it didn’t. Tarana fought to reunite her fractured soul, through organizing, pursuing justice, and finding community. In her debut memoir she shares her extensive work supporting and empowering Black and brown girls, and the devastating realization that to truly help these girls, she needed to help that scared, ashamed child still in her soul. She needed to stop running and confront what had happened to her, for Heaven and Diamond and the countless other young Black women for whom she cared. They gave her the courage to embrace her power. A power which in turn she shared with the entire world. Through these young Black and brown women, Tarana found that we can only offer empathy to others if we first offer it to ourselves. Unbound is the story of an inimitable woman’s inner strength and perseverance, all in pursuit of bringing healing to her community and the world around her, but it is also a story of possibility, of empathy, of power, and of the leader we all have inside ourselves. In sharing her path toward healing and saying ‘me too,’ Tarana reaches out a hand to help us all on our own journeys.” – from the publisher

• Still Mad : American women writers and the feminist imagination, 1950-2020 by Sandra M. Gilbert; Susan Gubar

  Call Number: PS152 .G555 2021

  ISBN: 9780393651713

  Publication Date: 2021-08-17

  “A brilliant, sweeping history of the contemporary women’s movement told through the lives and works of the literary women who shaped it. Forty years after their first groundbreaking work of feminist literary theory, The Madwoman in the Attic, award-winning collaborators Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar map the literary history of feminism’s second wave. From its stirrings in the midcentury–when Sylvia Plath, Betty Friedan, and Joan Didion found their voices and Diane di Prima, Lorraine Hansberry, and Audre Lorde discovered community in rebellion–to a resurgence in the new millennium in the writings of Alison Bechdel, Claudia Rankine, and N. K. Jemisin, Gilbert and Gubar trace the evolution of feminist literature. They offer lucid, compassionate, and piercing readings of major works by these writers and others, including Adrienne Rich, Ursula K. Le Guin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Susan Sontag, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Toni Morrison. Activists and theorists like Nina Simone, Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler also populate these pages as Gilbert and Gubar examine the overlapping terrain of literature and politics in a comprehensive portrait of an expanding movement. As Gilbert and Gubar chart feminist gains–including creative new forms of protests and changing attitudes toward gender and sexuality — they show how the legacies of second wave feminists, and the misogynistic culture they fought, extend to the present. In doing so, they celebrate the diversity and urgency of women who have turned passionate rage into powerful writing.” – from the publisher

• Women and the UN : a new history of women’s international human rights by Rebecca Adami (Editor); Dan Plesch (Editor)

  Call Number: View eBook

  ISBN: 9781003036708

  Publication Date: 2021-07-28

  “This book provides a history of influential women in the United Nations and seeks to inspire empowerment with role models from bygone eras. The women whose voices this book presents helped shape UN conventions, declarations and policies with relevance to the international human rights of women throughout the world today. From the founding of the UN up until the Latin American feminist movements that pushed for gender equality in the UN Charter, and the Security Council resolutions on the role of women in peace and conflict, the volume reflects on how women delegates from different parts of the world have negotiated and disagreed on human rights issues related to gender within the UN throughout time. In doing so it sheds new light on how these hidden historical narratives enrich theoretical studies in international relations and global agency today. In view of contemporary feminist and postmodern critiques of the origin of human rights, uncovering women’s history of the United Nations from both Southern and Western perspectives allows us to consider questions of feminism and agency in international relations afresh.” – from the publisher

• State of Disaster : the failure of U.S. migration policy in an age of climate change by Maria Cristina Garcia

  Call Number: New Title Shelf HV640.4.U54 G38 2022

  ISBN: 9781469669953

  Publication Date: 2022-09-20

  “Focusing on Central America and the Caribbean, State of Disaster traces the development of U.S. refugee, humanitarian, and immigration policies in response to the 1995-2004 series of volcanic eruptions in Monserrat in the Leeward Islands, Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998, and the back-to-back Hurricanes Irma and Maria of 2017 that devastated the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The case of Irma and Maria reveal afresh the neocolonial realities that sentence citizens of U.S. territories to a liminal and unequal political status that makes economic growth difficult and recovery from natural disaster especially daunting. Reflecting what technical social science and science studies indicate but also obscure, Garcia argues that it is high time that U.S. policymakers create desperately needed new policies and suggests ways to amend or create new law altogether. She reminds us that while natural disasters are impossible to prevent, much of the devastation that occurs in the wake of natural disasters is artificial and can be mitigated.” – from the publisher

• Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless : a Japanese American diaspora in the Pacific by Michael R. Jin

  Call Number: E184.J3 J56 2022

  ISBN: 9781503614901

  Publication Date: 2021-11-16

  “From the 1920s to the eve of the Pacific War in 1941, more than 50,000 young second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) embarked on transpacific journeys to the Japanese Empire, putting an ocean between themselves and pervasive anti-Asian racism in the American West. Born U.S. citizens but treated as unwelcome aliens, this contingent of Japanese Americans-one in four U.S.-born Nisei-came in search of better lives but instead encountered a world shaped by increasingly volatile relations between the U.S. and Japan. Based on transnational and bilingual research in the United States and Japan, Michael R. Jin recuperates the stories of this unique group of American emigrants at the crossroads of U.S. and Japanese empire. From the Jim Crow American West to the Japanese colonial frontiers in Asia, and from internment camps in America to Hiroshima on the eve of the atomic bombing, these individuals redefined ideas about home, identity, citizenship, and belonging as they encountered multiple social realities on both sides of the Pacific. Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless examines the deeply intertwined histories of Asian exclusion in the United States, Japanese colonialism in Asia, and volatile geopolitical changes in the Pacific world that converged in the lives of Japanese American migrants.”

• Nomad Century : how climate migration will reshape our world by Gaia Vince

  Call Number: GE149 .V57 2022

  ISBN: 9781250821614

  Publication Date: 2022-08-23

  “We are facing a species emergency. We can survive, but to do so will require a planned and deliberate migration of a kind humanity has never before undertaken. This is the biggest human crisis you’ve never heard of.”

  “Drought-hit regions bleeding those for whom a rural life has become untenable. Coastlines diminishing year on year. Wildfires and hurricanes leaving widening swaths of destruction. The culprit, most of us accept, is climate change, but not enough of us are confronting one of its biggest, and most present, consequences: a total reshaping of the earth’s human geography. As Gaia Vince points out early in Nomad Century, global migration has doubled in the past decade, on track to see literal billions displaced in the coming decades. What exactly is happening, Vince asks? And how will this new great migration reshape us all? In this deeply-reported clarion call, Vince draws on a career of environmental reporting and over two years of travel to the front lines of climate migration across the globe, to tell us how the changes already in play will transform our food, our cities, our politics, and much more. Her findings are answers we all need, now more than ever.” – from the publisher

• The Xinjiang Emergency : exploring the causes and consequences of China’s mass detention of Uyghurs by Michael Clarke (Editor)

  Call Number: DS731.U4 X36 2022

  ISBN: 9781526153098

  Publication Date: 2022-02-08

  “The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the site of the largest mass repression of an ethnic and/or religious minority in the world today. Researchers estimate that since 2016 one million people have been detained there without trial. In the detention centres individuals are exposed to deeply invasive forms of surveillance and psychological stress, while outside them more than ten million Turkic Muslim minorities are subjected to a network of hi-tech surveillance systems, checkpoints and interpersonal monitoring. Existing reportage and commentary on the crisis tends to address these issues in isolation, but this ground-breaking volume brings them together, exploring the interconnections between the core strands of the Xinjiang emergency in order to generate a more accurate understanding of the mass detentions’ significance for the future of President Xi Jinping’s China.”

• Indelible City : dispossession and defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim

  Call Number: HC470.3 .H69 2022

  ISBN: 9780593191811

  Publication Date: 2022-04-19

  “An award-winning journalist and longtime Hong Konger indelibly captures the place, its people, and the untold history they are claiming, just as it is being erased. The story of Hong Kong has long been dominated by competing myths: to Britain, a ‘barren rock’ with no appreciable history; to China, a part of Chinese soil from time immemorial, at last returned to the ancestral fold. For decades, its history was simply not taught, especially to Hong Kongers, obscuring its origins as a place of refuge and rebellion. When protests erupted in 2019 and were met with escalating suppression from Beijing, Louisa Lim—raised in Hong Kong as a half-Chinese, half-English child, and now a reporter who has covered the region for more than a decade—realized that she was uniquely positioned to unearth Hong Kong’s untold stories. Lim’s deeply researched and personal account casts startling new light on key moments: the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose. Indelible City features guerrilla calligraphers, amateur historians and archaeologists and others who, like Lim, aim to put Hong Kongers at the center of their own story. Wending through it all is the King of Kowloon, whose iconic street art both embodied and inspired the identity of Hong Kong—a site of disappearance and reappearance, power and powerlessness, loss and reclamation.” – from the publisher

• Resisting Extractivism : Peruvian gold, everyday violence, and the politics of attention by Michael Wilson Becerril

  Call Number: HD9536.P42 B43 2021

  ISBN: 9780826501578

  Publication Date: 2021-02-15

  Gustavus author! “Peru is classified as one of the deadliest countries in the world for environmental defenders, where activists face many forms of violence. Through an ethnographic and systematic comparison of four gold-mining conflicts in Peru, Resisting Extractivism presents a vivid account of subtle and routine forms of violence, analyzing how meaning-making practices render certain types of damage and suffering noticeable while occluding others. The book thus builds a theory of violence from the ground up—how it is framed, how it impacts people’s lived experiences, and how it can be confronted. By excavating how the everyday interactions that underlie conflicts are discursively concealed and highlighted, this study assists in the prevention and transformation of violence over resource extraction in Latin America. The book draws on a controlled, qualitative comparison of four case studies, extensive ethnographic research conducted over fourteen months of fieldwork, analysis of over nine hundred archives and documents, and unprecedented access to more than 250 semi-structured interviews with key actors across industry, the state, civil society, and the media. Michael Wilson Becerril identifies, traces, and compares these dynamics to explain how similar cases can lead to contrasting outcomes—insights that may be usefully applied in other contexts to save lives and build better futures.” – from the publisher

• Mexico’s Human Rights Crisis by Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz (Editor); Barbara Frey (Editor)

  Call Number: JC599.M4 M525 2019

  ISBN: 9780812251074

  Publication Date: 2019-01-11

  “Lawless elements are ascendant in Mexico, as evidenced by the operations of criminal cartels engaged in human and drug trafficking, often with the active support or acquiescence of government actors. The sharp increase in the number of victims of homicide, disappearances and torture over the past decade is unparalleled in the country’s recent history. According to editors Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz and Barbara Frey, the ‘war on drugs’ launched in 2006 by President Felipe Calderón and the corrupting influence criminal organizations have on public institutions have empowered both state and nonstate actors to operate with impunity. Impunity, they argue, is the root cause that has enabled a human-rights crisis to flourish, creating a climate of generalized violence that is carried out, condoned, or ignored by the state and precluding any hope for justice. Mexico’s Human Rights Crisis offers a broad survey of the current human rights issues that plague Mexico. Essays focus on the human rights consequences that flow directly from the ongoing ‘war on drugs’ in the country, including violence aimed specifically at women, and the impunity that characterizes the government’s activities. Contributors address the violation of the human rights of migrants, in both Mexico and the United States, and cover the domestic and transnational elements and processes that shape the current human rights crisis, from the state of Mexico’s democracy to the influence of rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the decisions of Mexico’s National Supreme Court of Justice. Given the scope, the contemporaneity, and the gravity of Mexico’s human rights crisis, the recommendations made in the book by the editors and contributors to curb the violence could not be more urgent.” – from the publisher

• Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights by Tatiana Klepikova (Editor)

  Call Number: PG3245 .C65 2022

  ISBN: 9781350203778

  Publication Date: 2021-11-04

  “Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights is the first anthology of LGBTQ-themed plays written by Russian queer authors and straight allies in the 21st century. The book features plays by established and emergent playwrights of the Russian drama scene, including Roman Kozyrchikov, Andrey Rodionov and Ekaterina Troepolskaya, Valery Pecheykin, Natalya Milanteva, Olzhas Zhanaydarov, Vladimir Zaytsev, and Elizaveta Letter. Writing for children, teenagers, and adults, these authors explore gay, lesbian, trans, and other queer lives in prose and in verse. From a confession-style solo play to poetic satire on contemporary Russia; from a play for children to love dramas that have been staged for adult-only audiences in Moscow and other cities, this important anthology features work that was written around or after 2013-the year when the law on the prohibition of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors” was passed by the Russian government. These plays are universal stories of humanity that spread a message of tolerance, acceptance, and love and make clear that a queer scenario does not necessarily have to end in a tragedy just because it was imagined and set in Russia. They show that breathing, growing old, falling in love, falling out of love, and falling in love again can be just as challenging and rewarding in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia as it can be in New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg, or Buenos Aires.” – from the publisher

• Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi by Dan Healey

  Call Number: HQ76.45.S65 H43 2018

  ISBN: 9781350000780

  Publication Date: 2017-12-14

  “Examining nine “case histories” that reveal the origins and evolution of homophobic attitudes in modern Russia, Dan Healey asserts that the nation’s contemporary homophobia can be traced back to the particular experience of revolution, political terror and war its people endured after 1917. The book explores the roots of homophobia in the Gulag, the rise of a visible queer presence in Soviet cities after Stalin, and the political battles since 1991 over whether queer Russians can be valued citizens. Healey also reflects on the problems of “memorylessness” for Russia’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) movement more broadly and the obstacles it faces in trying to write its own history. The book makes use of little-known source material — much of it untranslated archival documentation — to explore how Russians have viewed same-sex love and gender transgression since the mid20th century. Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi provides a compelling background to the culture wars over the status of gay citizens in Russia today, whilst serving as a key text for all students of Russian social history over the last hundred years.”– Provided by publisher.”An historical exploration of Russian homophobic attitudes and their origins in the country’s troubled 20th century.” – from the publisher

• The Rohingya : an ethnography of ‘subhuman’ life by Nasir Uddin

  Call Number: DS528.2.R64 N37 2020

  ISBN: 9780199489350

  Publication Date: 2020-10-03

  “The Rohingya are known as the most persecuted minority population in the world. They do not belong to any state, as Myanmar stripped them of citizenship, rendering them stateless, and Bangladesh does not recognise them even as refugees. With the case of Rohingya people, the book offers a comprehensive portrait of the hidden transcript of statelessness, non-citizenship, transborder movements and refugee-hood in the legal structure of modern nation-state. It illuminates the pain, suffering, and struggle of carrying out the state of statelessness and refugee-hood at home-states and host-states across the world in general and the Rohingya people in the borderland of Bangladesh and Myanmar in particular. The book with ethnographically informed analysis critically engages with the existing scholarship on migration and refugee studies, asylum seekers and camp-people, and citizenship and human-rights issues while proposing a new theoretical perspective called “subhuman life”. It could be used for a better understanding of an extreme vulnerability and deep uncertainty of human life apart from the broad spectrum of genocide, ethnocide, ethnic cleansing, homicide and domicide. The idea of “subhuman life” offers a new frame of thought towards an understanding of the struggle for existence and the process of extinction. The book thus offers both an appealing theoretical potential and a solid piece of ethnography regarding refugees, stateless people, asylum seekers, transborder movements, and camp people with the case of the Rohingya.” – from the publisher

• Children’s Rights : today’s global challenge by John Wall

  Call Number: HQ789 .W35 2017

  ISBN: 9781442249776

  Publication Date: 2016-10-18

  “This accessible and authoritative book provides the first systematic overview of the global children’s rights movement. It introduces both beginners and experts to child and youth rights in all their theoretical, historical, cultural, political, and practical complexity. In the process, the book examines key controversies about globalization, cultural relativism, social justice, power, economics, politics, freedom, ageism, and more. Combining vivid examples with cutting-edge scholarship, Children’s Rights: Today’s Global Challenge lifts up the rights of the youngest third of humanity as the major human rights challenge of the twenty-first century.”

  “Ethicist and philosopher John Wall tackles some of the most intriguing and important questions posed by the concept of rights for children. In addition to articulating a persuasive and coherent theory of children’s rights that builds on the experiences of prior emerging rights movements, Wall explores how children’s rights play out in specific contexts from the right to vote to the right to be free from exploitive labor. Free of jargon and a pleasure to read, this is a book for every reader who cares about the future of human rights.”
  — Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, LQC Lamar Professor of Law, Emory University; director, Child Rights Project

• Human Trafficking : a comprehensive exploration of modern day slavery by Wendy Stickle; Shelby Nichole Hickman; Christine A. White

  Call Number: HQ281 .S844 2020

  ISBN: 9781506375038

  Publication Date: 2019-09-18

  “Human Trafficking: A Comprehensive Exploration into Modern Day Slavery by Wendy Stickle, Shelby Hickman, and Christine White examines the legal, socio-cultural, historical, and political aspects of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. While most texts only cover sex trafficking and labor trafficking, this text takes a more inclusive approach, provide coverage of what is currently known about organ trafficking, child marriage, and child soldiers as well. These topics are explored within the borders of the United States as well as across the world. The reality is that this problem is not limited to one country or, even, one continent. Technology and globalization have made this an international crisis that requires a collaborative and cooperative international response. The goal of this text is to provide an accurate understanding of all forms of human trafficking and current responses to this crime.” – from the publisher

• Mass Atrocities, the Responsibility to Protect and the Future of Human Rights by Simon Adams

  Call Number: KZ4082 .A33 2021

  ISBN: 9780367551292

  Publication Date: 2021-01-27

  “This book ambitiously weaves together history and politics to explain all of the major situations where mass atrocities have occurred, or been prevented, over the 15 years since the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) was adopted at the 2005 UN World Summit. The author provides a history of human rights, mass atrocities and the principle of the R2P from the perspective of someone whose day job has been to work with the UN Security Council, various governments and civil society to help ensure the international community does not fail those who face the threat of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity today. It examines the implementation of the controversial principle of R2P since 2011 and how we end the politics of impunity, indifference and inaction once and for all. Using case studies from Iraq, Syria, Myanmar and Libya, the book offers a unique perspective regarding how we make ‘never again’ a living principle, rather than a cliché and how we end the politics of impunity, indifference and inaction once and for all. It will be of especial interest to scholars, students and policymakers working in the fields of international politics or concerned about human rights, atrocities, the United Nations and international justice in the world today.” – from the publisher

• Places of Mind : a life of Edward Said by Timothy Brennan

  Call Number: E184.P33 B74 2022

  ISBN: 9781250829689

  Publication Date: 2022-03-22

  “Drawing on extensive archival sources and hundreds of interviews, Timothy Brennan’s Places of Mind is the first comprehensive biography of Said, one of the most controversial and celebrated intellectuals of the 20th century. In Brennan’s masterful work, Said, the pioneer of post-colonial studies, a tireless champion for his native Palestine, and an erudite literary critic, emerges as a self-doubting, tender, and eloquent advocate of literature’s dramatic effects on politics and civic life. Places of the Mind charts the intertwined routes of Said’s intellectual development, revealing him as a study in opposites: a cajoler and strategist, a New York intellectual with a foot in Beirut, an orchestra impresario in Weimar and Ramallah, a raconteur on national television, a Palestinian negotiator at the State Department, and an actor in films in which he played himself. Brennan traces the Arab influences of Said’s thinking along with his tutelage under Lebanese statesmen, off-beat modernist auteurs, and New York literati, as Said grew into a scholar whose influential writings changed the face of university life forever. With both intimidating brilliance and charm, Said turned these resources into a groundbreaking counter-tradition of radical humanism, set against the backdrop of techno-scientific dominance and religious war. With unparalleled clarity, Said gave the humanities a new authority in the age of Reaganism that continues today. Drawing on the testimonies of family, friends, students, and antagonists alike, and aided by FBI files, unpublished writing, and Said’s drafts of novels and personal letters, Places of the Mind captures Said’s intellectual breadth and influence in an unprecedented, intimate, and compelling portrait of one of the great minds of the twentieth century.” – from the publisher