On the cover: Beacon’s new neighborhood After 160 years on Beacon Hill, we’ve moved to an old mattress factory in what used to be Boston’s warehouse district but has recently been rechristened the Innovation District. With a great deal of work, our headquarters have been converted to a LEED Platinum certified building.
Beacon Press fall books 2015 Igniting Hearts and Minds
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Igniting Hearts and Minds
From The Only Woman in the Room Even in the 1970s, the sexism I experienced was rarely obvious. I grew up in a privileged, loving home with few barriers that might prevent a bright, confident young woman from succeeding in whatever field she took it in her head to enter. All this led me to suspect that the reasons for the scarcity of female physicists must be subtle, and those reasons must lie buried in the psyches of the women who loved science and math but never completed their degrees or, like me, earned their degrees but left their fields. . . . By trying to understand why I didn’t become a physicist, I hoped to gain insights into why so many young women still fail to go on in science and math in the numbers their presence in high school classrooms and their scores on standardized tests predict. What I discovered shocked me. Although more young women major in physics at Yale than when I attended school there, those young women told me stories of the sexism they had encountered in junior high and high school that seemed even more troubling than what I had experienced: complaints about being belittled and teased by their classmates and teachers, worries about being perceived as unfeminine or uncool. . . . The same forces that caused me to feel isolated and unsure of myself at Yale continue to hem in young women today, acting like an invisible electrified field to discourage all but the thickest skinned from following their passion for science, a phenomenon that turns out to be less true in other countries, where women are perceived as being equally capable in science and math as men.
Eileen Pollack
The Only Woman in the Room Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club A bracingly honest exploration of why there are still so few women in the hard sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer science
In 2005, when Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, asked why so few women achieve tenured positions in the hard sciences, Eileen Pollack set out to find the answer. In the 1970s, Pollack had excelled as one of Yale’s first two women to earn a bachelor of science degree in physics. But, isolated, lacking in confidence, and starved for encouragement, she abandoned her lifelong dream of becoming a theoretical physicist. Years later, she thought back on her experiences and wondered what had changed in the intervening decades, and what challenges remained. Based on six years of interviewing dozens of teachers and students and reviewing studies on gender bias, The Only Woman in the Room is an illuminating exploration of the cultural, social, psychological, and institutional barriers confronting women in the STEM disciplines. Pollack brings to light the struggles that women in the sciences are often hesitant to admit and provides hope that changing attitudes and behaviors can bring more women into fields in which they remain, to this day, seriously underrepresented. Eileen Pollack is the author of the novels Breaking and Entering (a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection) and Paradise, New York, as well as two collections of short fiction, an award-winning book of nonfiction, and two creative-nonfiction textbooks. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories. She is a professor on the faculty of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. She divides her time between Manhattan and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• Events in New York City; Ann Arbor, MI; Rochester, NY; New Haven, CT; and Portland, OR
ON SALE SEPTEMBER 15 Women’s Studies / Science $27.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-4657-9 $33.00 Canada Selling territory: World Trans.: Author 6 x 9 / 288 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-4661-6 3
Seven civilians were shot by police on September 4, 2005 Steering with his right hand, the ex-marine leans out the window and fires a handgun with his left toward a pack of people he glimpses ahead, gathered at the foot of the bridge. The truck screeches to a halt, sending some in back tumbling over, and officers pour out. They say nothing. One, Anthony Villavaso II, rips nine shots from his AK-47. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Officer Faulcon hits the ground, pumps his shotgun, then fires. He pumps again, then fires. . . . One officer aims his pistol at the back of a slight figure sprinting away from the bridge, and pulls the trigger twice. Another points his rifle toward two men trying to race up and over the bridge for cover, and fires. . . . When the shooting stops, seventeen-year-old James Brissette Jr. is dead, bullets riddling his six-foot, 130-pound body from the heel of his foot to the top of his head. Susan Bartholomew is trying to crawl on the pavement, her right arm dangling by a thread. Her daughter’s stomach is shredded by a bullet. Her husband’s head is pierced by shrapnel. Her nephew Jose is shot in the neck, jaw, stomach, elbow, and hand. A paramedic arriving soon after says not to bother with him; the teen is too far gone. . . . Ronald Madison is slumped over the pavement, the back of his white shirt turned red, with seven gunshot wounds in his back. As Madison wheezes his final breaths, . . . Hunter watches his former supervisor Bowen . . . stomp on his back, leaving a boot print upon the slight figure sprawled in pools of blood. Like every one of the victims, he is black, and unarmed.
Photograph: Billy Metcalf Photography. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Ronnie Greene
Shots on the Bridge Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina A gripping tale of police brutality, investigating the cover-up of a deadly NOLA cops’ shooting of six unarmed civilians, published on the tenth anniversary of Katrina
Six days after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans, New Orleans Police Department officers opened fire on residents crossing the Danziger Bridge. When the shooting stopped, a mentally challenged man and a seventeen-year-old boy were dead, riddled with gunshot wounds. A mother’s arm was shot off, her daughter’s stomach gouged with a bullet hole, and her husband’s head pierced by shrapnel. Her nephew was shot in the neck, jaw, stomach, and hand. All six of the victims, along with two others arrested at the scene, were black and unarmed. Before the blood dried, the shooters and their supervisors had hatched a cover-up. They would plant a gun, invent witnesses, and charge two of their victims with attempted murder. The NOPD hailed all the shooters on the bridge as heroes. Shots on the Bridge explores one of the most dramatic cases of injustice in the last decade. It reveals the fear that gripped the police of a city fallen into anarchy, the circumstances that led desperate survivors to go to the bridge, and the horror that erupted with the gunfire. It dissects the cover-up that nearly buried the truth and the legal maze that, a decade later, leaves the victims still searching for justice. Ronnie Greene is an investigative journalist at the Associated Press. Before joining the AP, Greene was project editor for Breathless and Burdened, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. He is the author of Night Fire: Big Oil, Poison Air, and Margie Richard’s Fight to Save Her Town. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia.
• Events in New Orleans; Washington, DC; and Miami
ON SALE AUGUST 18 Crime / Sociology $24.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-3350-0 $29.99 Canada Selling territory: World English Trans.: Agent Illustrations: 8-page photographic insert 6 x 9 / 264 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-3351-7 5
Kevin Jennings, editor
One Teacher in Ten in the New Millennium LGBT Educators Speak Out About What’s Gotten Better . . . and What Hasn’t Twenty completely new stories of negotiating the triumphs and challenges of being an LGBT educator in the twenty-first century
Following on two successful volumes of original stories published in 1994 and 2004, this all-new collection in the One Teacher in Ten series brings together stories from all over America—and around the world. The result is a rich tapestry of varied experiences. From a teacher who feels he must remain closeted in the comparative safety of New York City public schools to teachers who are out in places as far afield as South Africa and China, the educators in One Teacher in Ten in the New Millennium prove that LGBT teachers are as diverse and complex as humanity itself. Voices largely absent from the first two editions—including transgender people, people of color, teachers working in rural districts, and educators from outside the United States—feature prominently in this new collection, giving readers a richer and deeper understanding of the array of experiences of LGBT educators. Kevin Jennings is the founder of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. Currently he is the executive director of the Arcus Foundation, a leading funder of human rights and conservation work. He lives in New York City. ON SALE AUGUST 25 Education $17.00 Paperback Original 978-0-8070-5586-1 $20.00 Canada Selling territory: World All rights: Beacon Press 5½ x 8½ / 192 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-5587-8 6
Philip Warburg
Harness the Sun America’s Quest for a Solar-Powered Future Going from the inner city to the open desert, a seasoned environmental advocate looks at solar energy’s remarkable ascent and its promise for America’s future
Solar power was once the domain of futurists and environmentally minded suburbanites. Today it is part of mainstream America—and the solar industry is absolutely booming, as it adds workers almost twenty times faster than the overall US economy. Beginning in his Boston-area home, where a rooftop solar array meets most of his family’s power needs, Philip Warburg travels the country and introduces readers to a surprising array of pioneers who are spearheading America’s solar revolution, from conservative business leaders and politicians to students and professors committed to greening their campuses. Pollution-ravaged urban industrial areas and Native American groups alike are finding that solar offers the key to revitalizing their communities—all while weaning the country off of fossil fuels. In Harness the Sun, Warburg argues that solar offers a realistic solution to the urgent problem of transforming our energy sector in a way that meets demand and is technically and economically viable. Philip Warburg has served as president of the Conservation Law Foundation, as executive director of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, and as a senior attorney at the Environmental Law Institute. The author of Harvest the Wind: America’s Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability, Warburg lives with his family in Newton, Massachusetts.
ON SALE SEPTEMBER 8 Environment $27.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-3376-0 $33.00 Canada Selling territory: USC Trans., aud.: Author 9 black & white photos 6 x 9 / 256 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-3377-7 7
An astonishing debut from a fresh voice in American literature “Deeply alive and exciting and nuanced, a story of injury and years alone in the woods, The Point of Vanishing is all about what it means to see, and how we might ask ourselves to see differently—to live differently in our own bodies, and in the world. Though this book is set largely in the snow and silence, there are embers of hunger and questioning and longing that glow deep in its core and refuse to be cooled. Their heat charges and illuminates every moment of these pages. Powerful and ineffable, it feels like a blessing.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
—Annie Philbrick, Bank Square Books
Sophie Barbasch
“Axelrod uses his seclusion in the natural solitary world of the North in winter to explore how we can have vision without really seeing. Well written with an honesty one can respect, The Point of Vanishing is more than an exploration of the human soul; it is a discovery of how our bodies can compensate and complement for our senses when we experience the partial loss of one.”
Howard Axelrod
The Point of Vanishing A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude Into the Wild meets Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—a lyrical memoir of a life changed in an instant and of the perilous beauty of searching for identity in solitude
After losing vision in one eye during his senior year at Harvard, Howard Axelrod found himself in a world where nothing was solid, where the smooth veneer of reality had been shattered, and where the distance between how people saw him and how he saw himself had widened into a gulf. Five years later, heartbroken from a love affair in Italy and desperate for a sense of orientation, Axelrod retreated to a small house in the Vermont woods. Miles from the nearest neighbor, he lived with barely any human contact or communication for two years. Whether tending to the woodstove or snow-shoeing through the forest, he devoted his energies to learning to see again—to paying attention and to rediscovering what really matters. A gorgeous memoir of solitude in an age of superficial connection, The Point of Vanishing probes the profoundly human questions of perception, time, identity, and meaning. Howard Axelrod’s work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Shambhala Sun, and the Boston Globe, among other publications. Axelrod has held teaching positions at Harvard, the University of Arizona, and Wentworth Institute of Technology. He currently teaches at Grub Street in Boston, where he lives. This is his first book.
• Events in Cambridge, MA; Brooklyn, NY; Vermont; and Portland, ME
ON SALE SEPTEMBER 22 Memoir / Nature $24.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-7546-3 $29.99 Canada Selling territory: World Trans., aud.: Author 5½ x 8½ / 224 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-7547-0 9
Premilla Nadasen
Household Workers Unite The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement Telling the stories of African American domestic workers, this book resurrects a little-known history of domestic worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, offering new perspectives on race, labor, feminism, and organizing.
In this ground-breaking history of African American domestic worker organizing, scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen shatters countless myths and misconceptions about a workforce that has been historically misunderstood. Nadasen shows how, in the 1960s and 1970s, African American household workers developed unique strategies for social change and formed unprecedented alliances with activists in both the women’s rights and the black freedom movements. Using compelling personal stories of the leaders and participants on the front lines, Household Workers Unite is a powerful account of the poor women of color whose passionate struggle for higher wages, better working conditions, and respect on the job created a sustained political movement.
ON SALE AUGUST 25 History $26.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-1450-9 $32.00 Canada Selling territory: World All rights: Beacon Press 4 black & white photos 6 x 9 / 256 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-1451-6 10
“A must-read for workers, activists, and historians. With insight and precision, she brings to life the dynamic women who, in their courageous pursuit of respect and justice, inspired many movements and future generations.”—Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and codirector of the Caring Across Generations campaign Premilla Nadasen is an associate professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and is the author of several books on welfare, including the award-winning Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States. A long-time scholar-activist, Nadasen works closely with domestic workers’ rights organizations, for which she has written policy briefs and served as an expert academic witness. She lives in Mount Vernon, New York.
Wen Stephenson
What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice An on-the-ground look at some of the “new American radicals” who have laid everything on the line to build a stronger climate justice movement
The international scientific consensus is that we’re in trouble: catastrophic climate change is upon us. In 2010, Wen Stephenson woke up to this reality, and to what he calls “the spiritual crisis at the heart of the climate crisis,” and asked: “What am I going to do about it?” He decided to walk away from his successful career as a mainstream journalist and join the growing climate justice movement. In What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other, Stephenson tells his own story of becoming an unlikely radical and the stories of the remarkable and courageous people he has worked alongside: oldschool environmentalists and young climate justice organizers; frontline community leaders and Texas tar-sands blockaders; evangelicals, Quakers, and Occupiers. He argues that the movement is less like environmentalism and more like the great human rights and social justice struggles of the past, such as abolitionism and civil rights. This is a movement about human solidarity—and a profoundly spiritual struggle on behalf of our fellow human beings. “This is a young, fascinating, in-motion movement, and Wen Stephenson captures it with grace and power. I learned a good deal about things I thought I already understood.” —Bill McKibben, cofounder of 350.org Wen Stephenson, an independent writer and climate activist, is a frequent contributor to The Nation. A former editor at the Atlantic and Boston Globe, he was most recently the senior producer of NPR’s On Point. He lives with his wife and two children in Wayland, Massachusetts.
• Events in Boston and Western MA
ON SALE OCTOBER 6 Environment $24.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-8840-1 $29.99 Canada Selling territory: World All rights: Beacon Press 6 x 9 / 256 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-8841-8 11
Mark Ludwig, editor
Liberation New Works on Freedom from Internationally Renowned Poets Foreword by Ha Jin An exploration of freedom by some of the world’s most celebrated poets, published for the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps
• Promotion tied to the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps
ON SALE SEPTEMBER 29 Poetry $16.00 Paperback Original 978-0-8070-0027-4 $19.00 Canada Selling territory: North America 1st ser., 2nd ser., trans., UK, and aud.: New Leaf Literary & Media, Inc. 5½ x 8½ / 208 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-4190-1 12
The year 2015 marks the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the conclusion of the Second World War. But around the world, oppressed and imprisoned people are still longing for freedom and asking, “What does it mean to be free?” This collection of poems explores that question. In honor of the anniversary, some of the world’s top contemporary voices—including Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Richard Blanco— have written never-before-published poems on the theme of liberation as it inspires them personally and creatively. The result is an artistic representation of the universal yearning for freedom spanning eighty-two poems, twenty-five countries, and countless stories of oppression, imprisonment, and liberation. This collection demonstrates the power of art to heal and to bring attention to freedom as a universal human right. Mark Ludwig is the founding executive director of the Terezín Music Foundation (TMF), dedicated to preserving and performing the musical legacy of composers imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp and all artists lost in the Holocaust. By commissioning new works of composers and poets, TMF strives to fill the silence these great artists left and to use their legacy as a vehicle promoting dialogue and freedom of expression. Mark lives in Boston, where he is also a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Michael Bess
Our Grandchildren Redesigned Life in the Bioengineered Society of the Near Future A panoramic overview of biotechnologies that can endlessly boost human capabilities and the drastic changes these “superhuman� traits could trigger
Biotechnology is moving fast. In the coming decades, advanced pharmaceuticals, bioelectronics, and genetic interventions will boost human physical and mental performance to unprecedented levels. People will have access to pills that make them stronger and faster, informatic devices will interface seamlessly with the human brain, and epigenetic modification may allow people to reshape their own physical and mental identity at will. The results will no doubt be mixed. People will live longer, healthier lives and will generate staggeringly complex forms of knowledge. But these technologies also threaten to widen the rift between rich and poor, to generate new forms of social and economic division, and to force people into constant upgrades merely to keep up. Individuals may acquire such extreme capabilities that they will no longer be recognized as unambiguously human. Award-winning historian Michael Bess provides a clear, nontechnical overview of cutting-edge biotechnology and paints a vivid portrait of a nearfuture society in which bioenhancement has become a part of everyday life. He surveys the ethical questions raised by the enhancement enterprise and explores the space for human agency in dealing with the challenges that these technologies will present. Michael Bess is the Chancellor’s Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He has received major fellowships from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Fulbright program. His previous books include Choices Under Fire and The Light-Green Society.
ON SALE OCTOBER 13 Health / Medicine / Science / Technology $27.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-5217-4 $33.00 Canada Selling territory: North America UK, trans: Agent 6 x 9 / 320 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-5218-1 13
Deborah Jian Lee
Rescuing Jesus How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism An inside look at the young, diverse, progressive Christians who are transforming the evangelical movement
Most of what we think we know about evangelicals is wrong, or is well on its way to being outdated. Generational changes and the shifting racial makeup of evangelical Christians are changing what we think of as evangelical culture and politics. Today’s young evangelicals are more likely than their elders to accept same-sex marriage, more inclined to think of “pro-life” issues as being about support for the poor, and more accepting of equality between men and women. Those on the leading edge of progressive evangelicalism—white, black, Asian, and Hispanic, as well as straight and LGBTQ, believers—are working to change the substance of evangelicalism and to wrest power away from conservative Christians. In Rescuing Jesus, Deborah Jian Lee, a journalist and former evangelical, brings readers deep inside this progressive movement and tells the stories of the young women and men at the forefront of it. Given the clout that conservative evangelicals still hold in national politics, Lee argues, this movement is important not only for the future of evangelicalism but for the future of our country.
ON SALE NOVEMBER 10 Religion $26.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-3347-0 $32.00 Canada Selling territory: World Trans.: Author 6 x 9 / 288 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-3348-7 14
Deborah Jian Lee is an award-winning journalist and radio producer. She has taught journalism at Columbia University, is the 2016 Distinguished Visiting Journalist at Cornell College, and has worked as a staff reporter for the Associated Press. She has written for Foreign Policy, Forbes, Slate, GOOD, Reuters, Religion News Service, WBEZ, and others. She lives in Chicago.
Jeanne Theoharis
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks Revised edition New introduction by the author Recipient of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography and the 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians
Presenting a powerful corrective to the popular iconography of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, scholar Jeanne Theoharis excavates Parks’s political philosophy and six decades of activism. This revised edition includes a new introduction by the author, who reflects on materials in the Rosa Parks estate, purchased by Howard Buffett in 2014 and displayed by the Library of Congress in February 2015. Theoharis contextualizes this rich material—made available to the public for the very first time and including more than seven thousand documents—and deepens our understanding of Parks’s personal, financial, and political struggles.
• Promotion tied to Parks’s birthday (February 4)
“Richly informative, calmly passionate and much needed.” —New York Times Book Review “In the first sweeping history of Parks’s life, Theoharis shows us . . . [that] Parks not only sat down on the bus; she stood on the right side of justice for her entire life.” —Julian Bond, chairman emeritus, NAACP “It has taken an astute author to find the real Parks. Even though her refusal to give up her bus seat sparked a revolution, Rosa Parks was no accidental heroine. She was born to it, and Theoharis ably shows us how and why.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
ON SALE NOVEMBER 24 Biography $17.50 Paperback 978-0-8070-7692-7 $21.00 Canada Selling territory: World 17 black & white photos
Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and the author or coauthor of four books and articles on the black freedom struggle and the contemporary politics of race in the United States.
All rights: Beacon Press 6 x 9 / 336 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-7693-4 15
Reverend Barber and the Moral Monday Movement in the News Protests in North Carolina Challenge Conservative Shift in State Politics —The New York Times “Moral Monday” Expands to a Week of Social Justice Action Across US —The Washington Post Budding Liberal Protest Movements Begin to Take Root in South —The New York Times Moral Monday Movement Expands to 12 States for Week of Protests —The Huffington Post Rev. Dr. William Barber II on Today’s Protest Movements —The New York Times Opinion Pages A Conversation with the Man Behind “Moral Mondays” —MSNBC Meet the Preacher Behind Moral Mondays —Mother Jones Photograph: Phil Fonville
The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
The Third Reconstruction Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justicce Movement A modern-day civil rights champion tells the stirring story of how he helped start a movement to bridge America’s racial divide.
Over the summer of 2013, Rev. William Barber led more than a hundred thousand people at rallies across North Carolina to protest cuts to voting rights and the social safety net, which the state’s conservative legislature had implemented. These protests, which came to be known as Moral Mondays, have blossomed into the largest social movement the South has seen since the civil rights era—and, since then, it has spread to states as diverse as Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Ohio. In The Third Reconstruction, Rev. Barber tells the story of how he helped lay the groundwork for the Moral Mondays movement and explores the unfulfilled promises of America’s multiethnic democracy. He draws on the lessons of history to offer a vision of a new Reconstruction, one in which a diverse coalition of citizens—black and white, religious and secular, Northern and Southern—fight side-by-side for racial and economic justice for all Americans. The Third Reconstruction is both a blueprint for activism at the state level and an inspiring call to action from the twenty-first century’s most effective grassroots organizer. The Reverend Dr. William Barber is the president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP and pastor at Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he lives. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an associate minister at the historically black St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church and the author of Common Prayer and The New Monasticism. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.
ON SALE JANUARY 19 Memoir / Civil Rights $24.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-8360-4 $29.99 Canada Selling territory: World All rights: Beacon Press 6 x 9 / 176 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-8362-8 17
Alondra Nelson
The Social Life of DNA Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome The unexpected story of how genetic testing is affecting race in America
• Events in Baltimore and New York City • Promotion tied to DNA day (April 23)
DNA has been a master key unlocking medical and forensic secrets, but its genealogical life has also been notable. Genealogy is the second most popular hobby in the United States, and the outpouring of interest in it from the African American community has been remarkable. After personally and professionally delving into the phenomenon for more than a decade, Alondra Nelson realized that genetic testing is being used to grapple with the unfinished business of slavery. It is being used for reconciliation, to establish ties with African ancestral homelands, to rethink citizenship, and to make unprecedented legal claims for slavery reparations based on genetic ancestry. Arguing that DNA offers a new tool for enduring issues, Nelson shows that the social life of DNA is affecting and transforming twenty-first-century racial politics. “Nelson explores this large, sprawling, fascinating subject with clarity, passion, rigor, and a keen eye for revealing detail. . . . It is a brilliant work.” —Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School and author of The Persistence of the Color Line
ON SALE JANUARY 12 Sociology $27.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-3301-2 $33.00 Canada Selling territory: World All rights: Beacon Press 6 x 9 / 288 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-3302-9 18
Alondra Nelson is Dean of Social Science and professor of sociology and gender studies at Columbia University. She is author of the award-winning book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Science, Boston Globe, and the Guardian. She lives in New York City.
Ann Neumann
The Good Death An Exploration of Dying in America Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States.
If a good death exists, what does it look like? This question lies at the heart of Neumann’s rigorously researched and intimately told journey along the ultimate borderland of American life: American death. From church basements to hospital wards to prison cells, Neumann charts the social, political, religious, and medical landscape to explore how we die today. The Good Death weaves personal accounts with a historical exploration of the movements and developments that have changed the ways we experience death. With the diligence of a journalist and the compassion of a caregiver, Neumann provides a portrait of death in the United States that is humane, beautifully written, and essential to our greater understanding of the future of end-of-life care.
• Events in New York City and Minneapolis/St. Paul
Ann Neumann is a journalist who has written for the New York Times, the Nation, and Guernica, where she is a contributing nonfiction editor. She is a visiting scholar at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ON SALE JANUARY 5 Sociology of Death / Grief $26.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-8062-7 $32.00 Canada Selling territory: USCOM UK, trans.: author 6 x 9 / 232 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-8063-4 19
Coming in Paperback
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States ON SALE AUGUST 11 5783-4 / $16.95 pb 0040-3 / $27.95 hc
Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald The Real Cost of Fracking How America’s Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food Foreword by Sandra Steingraber ON SALE SEPTEMBER 1 8141-9 / $18.00 pb 8493-9 / $26.95 hc
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Eric Schwarz The Opportunity Equation How Citizen Teachers Are Combating the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools Foreword by Lawrence Summers ON SALE AUGUST 25 7345-2 / $18.00 pb 3372-2 / $26.95 hc
Daisy Hernández A Cup of Water Under My Bed A Memoir ON SALE SEPTEMBER 8 6292-0 / $18.00 pb 1448-6 / $24.95 hc
Cornel West, in Dialogue with and Edited by Christa Buschendorf Black Prophetic Fire ON SALE SEPTEMBER 1 1810-1 / $16.00 pb 0352-7 / $25.95 hc
Amy Jo Burns Cinderland A Memoir ON SALE SEPTEMBER 8 5227-3 / $16.00 pb 3703-4 / $24.95 hc
Spring Coming 2014 in Paperback Highlights
Alan Wolfe At Home in Exile
Rafia Zakaria The Upstairs Wife
Why Diaspora Is Good for the Jews ON SALE OCTOBER 27 8618-6 / $20.00 pb 3313-5 / $27.95 hc
An Intimate History of Pakistan ON SALE JANUARY 5 8046-7 / $18.00 pb 0336-7/ $26.95 hc
Martin Luther King, Jr. The Radical King
J. A. Mills Blood of the Tiger
Edited and introduced by Cornel West ON SALE JANUARY 12 3452-1 / $15.00 pb 1282-6 / $26.95 hc
A Story of Conspiracy, Greed, and the Battle to Save a Magnificent Species ON SALE JANUARY 12 3064-6 / $20.00 pb 7496-1 / $27.95 hc
Kay Whitlock and Michael Bronski Considering Hate Violence, Goodness, and Justice in American Culture and Politics ON SALE JANUARY 19 4295-3 / $20.00 pb 9191-3 / $25.95 hc
Lani Guinier The Tyranny of the Meritocracy Democratizing Higher Education in America ON SALE JANUARY 12 7812-9 / $18.00 pb 0627-6 / $24.95 hc
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Summer 2015 Highlights ON SALE JUNE 30 African American Studies / Biography $27.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-1260-4 $32.95 Canada Selling territory: World First ser., aud.: Author 6 x 9 / 328 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-1261-1
ON SALE JULY 14 Disability $24.95 Hardcover 978-0-8070-7156-4 $27.95 Canada Selling territory: World All rights: Beacon Press 6 x 9 / 296 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-7157-1
ON SALE AUGUST 18 Religion / Education
One Righteous Man Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York “The magnificent—and moving—story of the first black New York City cop . . . struggling valiantly for dignity in a world more often interested in his marginalization (or worse) . . . forming a tragic but ultimately heroic understanding of the inner workings of the greatest city on earth.”—Ken Burns
Lennard J. Davis
Enabling Acts The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights “Lennard Davis’s book offers a historic glimpse into the creation of the ADA—legislation that has positively affected the lives of countless Americans living with physical and mental challenges. To adequately understand and celebrate this landmark legislation, Enabling Acts is a must-read.” —Senator Bob Dole
Linda K. Wertheimer
$25.95 Hardcover
Faith Ed
978-0-8070-8616-2
Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance
$28.95 Canada Selling territory: World All rights: Beacon Press 6 x 9 / 224 pages E-book: 978-0-8070-8617-9
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Arthur Browne
Veteran education journalist Linda K. Wertheimer travels the nation listening to all sides of the controversy surrounding the teaching of religion in public schools, interviewing clergy, teachers, children, and parents who are Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, and atheist. Her fascinating investigation reveals a public education system struggling to find the right path forward and offers a promising roadmap for raising a generation of religiously literate Americans.
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Index by Author
Index by Title
Axelrod / Point of Vanishing, The...............................9
Good Death, The / Neumann...................................19
Barber and Wilson-Hartgrove / Third Reconstruction, The...................................17
Harness the Sun / Warburg.........................................7
Bess / Our Grandchildren Redesigned.........................13 Greene / Shots on the Bridge.......................................5 Jennings / One Teacher in Ten in the New Millennium..............................................6 Lee / Rescuing Jesus...................................................14 Ludwig / Liberation..................................................12 Nadasen / Household Workers Unite.........................10
Household Workers Unite / Nadasen.........................10 Liberation / Ludwig..................................................12 One Teacher in Ten in the New Millennium / Jennings...............................................................6 Only Woman in the Room, The / Pollack....................3 Our Grandchildren Redesigned / Bess.........................13 Point of Vanishing, The / Axelrod...............................9
Nelson / Social Life of DNA, The..............................18
Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, The / Theoharis...........................................................15
Neumann / Good Death, The...................................19
Rescuing Jesus / Lee...................................................14
Pollack / Only Woman in the Room, The....................3
Shots on the Bridge / Greene.......................................5
Stephenson / What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other...............................................11
Social Life of DNA, The / Nelson..............................18
Theoharis / Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, The...................................................15 Warburg / Harness the Sun.........................................7
Third Reconstruction, The / Barber and Wilson-Hartgrove..............................................17 What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other / Stephenson........................................................11
On the cover: Beacon’s new neighborhood After 160 years on Beacon Hill, we’ve moved to an old mattress factory in what used to be Boston’s warehouse district but has recently been rechristened the Innovation District. With a great deal of work, our headquarters have been converted to a LEED Platinum certified building.
Beacon Press fall books 2015 Igniting Hearts and Minds
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