Asylum For Mankind

Baseler explains how British and colonial officials and landowners lured settlers from rival nations with promises of religious toleration, economic opportunity, and the "rights of Englishmen," and she identifies the liberties, disabilities, and benefits experienced by different immigrant groups. She also explains how the exploitation of slaves subsidized the living standards of Europeans who came by choice.

Ever since the Age of Discovery, Europeans have viewed the New World as a haven for the victims of religious persecution and a dumping ground for social liabilities. Marilyn C. Baseler shows how the New World's role as a refuge for the victims of political, as well as religious and economic, oppression gradually devolved on the thirteen colonies that became the United States.She traces immigration patterns and policies to show how the new American Republic became an "asylum for mankind." Baseler explains how British and colonial officials and landowners lured settlers from rival nations with promises of religious toleration, economic opportunity, and the "rights of Englishmen," and identifies the liberties, disabilities, and benefits experienced by different immigrant groups. She also explains how the exploitation of slaves, who immigrated from Africa in chains, subsidized the living standards of Europeans who came by choice.American revolutionaries enthusiastically assumed the responsibility for serving as an asylum for the victims of political oppression, according to Baseler, but soon saw the need for a probationary period before granting citizenship to immigrants unexperienced in exercising and safeguarding republican liberty. Revolutionary Americans also tried to discourage the immigration of those who might jeopardize the nation's republican future. Her work defines the historical context for current attempts by municipal, state, and federal governments to abridge the rights of aliens.

Describes one political refugee's long and difficult struggle through immigration processing, detailing his imprisonment in Kenya, his escape to the U.S., and the ordeal of dealing with a bureaucracy that sought to deport him.

The first comprehensive, in-depth book on the Trump administration’s assault on asylum protections Arnovis couldn’t stay in El Salvador. If he didn’t leave, a local gangster promised that his family would dress in mourning—that he would wake up with flies in his mouth. “It was like a bomb exploded in my life,” Arnovis said. The Dispossessed tells the story of a twenty-four-year-old Salvadoran man, Arnovis, whose family’s search for safety shows how the United States—in concert with other Western nations—has gutted asylum protections for the world’s most vulnerable. Crisscrossing the border and Central America, John Washington traces one man’s quest for asylum. Arnovis is separated from his daughter by US Border Patrol agents and struggles to find security after being repeatedly deported to a gang-ruled community in El Salvador, traumatic experiences relayed by Washington with vivid intensity. Adding historical, literary, and current political context to the discussion of migration today, Washington tells the history of asylum law and practice through ages to the present day. Packed with information and reflection, The Dispossessed is more than a human portrait of those who cross borders—it is an urgent and persuasive case for sharing the country we call home.

Artist, Charles Bragg brings us a view of his own special reality—and sheds new light on what we know of our own. In Asylum Earth, nothing is quite as it seems. Toulouse-Laurec shares a room with El Greco in "Art Heaven," while back among the living, an irate "Letter to the Editor" demands that someone go in and finish "all those impressionist paintings—why leave just an impression?" Irrelevant and brilliantly funny, Bragg brings us a view of his own special reality—and sheds new light on what we know of our own. Witticisms, satire, and irony abound, and no profession or institution escapes Bragg's sharp eye. Often compared to Daumier, Nast, and Bosch, Bragg is a master of observation. Once our human frailties are scrutinized by his myopic gaze, we may never see ourselves in quite the same way again! Illustrated throughout with Bragg's paintings and etchings.

"By examining the ways in which museums involve refugees and asylum seekers, Changes in Museum Practice: New Media, Refugees and Participation explores the opportunities around new media. Leading artists, curators, and academics come together to outline different degrees of participation by audiences and communities and explore a range of topics from video games to theatre, from photography to participatory video and digital storytelling. Case studies are used throughout to highlight the unique ways that various approaches to inclusion and participation can be used successfully." --Book Jacket.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize "A panoramic and perfectly magnificent intellectual history of medicine…This is the book that delivers it all." —Sherwin Nuland, author of How We Die Hailed as "a remarkable achievement" (Boston Globe) and as "a triumph: simultaneously entertaining and instructive, witty and thought-provoking…a splendid and thoroughly engrossing book" (Los Angeles Times), Roy Porter's charting of the history of medicine affords us an opportunity as never before to assess its culture and science and its costs and benefits to mankind. Porter explores medicine's evolution against the backdrop of the wider religious, scientific, philosophical, and political beliefs of the culture in which it develops, covering ground from the diseases of the hunter-gatherers to the more recent threats of AIDS and Ebola, from the clearly defined conviction of the Hippocratic oath to the muddy ethical dilemmas of modern-day medicine. Offering up a treasure trove of historical surprises along the way, this book "has instantly become the standard single-volume work in its field" (The Lancet).