Paths To Paradise

We are moving into a world where a power elite allocates jobs: where commodities buy consumers: where socialist as well as capitalist dogma is an obstacle to comprehension.In this book, Andre Gorz returns to Marx's Grundrisse and the prophecy of early nineteenth century socialists and rediscovers a vision of post-capitalist society founded on the automation of work and the transcending of the exchange economy. He argues that we have reached the precise stage where these utopian insights become a reality. If the socialist movement is to have something to say to a generation whose identity is no longer shaped at work, it must grasp these insights.

Medieval Jerusalem was a vibrant international center, home to multiple cultures, faiths, and languages. Harmonious and dissonant voices from many lands, including Persians, Turks, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, Copts, Ethiopians, Indians, and Europeans, passed in the narrow streets of a city not much larger than midtown Manhattan. Patrons, artists, pilgrims, poets, and scholars from Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions focused their attention on the Holy City, endowing and enriching its sacred buildings, creating luxury goods for its residents, and praising its merits. This artistic fertility was particularly in evidence between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, notwithstanding often devastating circumstances—from the earthquake of 1033 to the fierce battles of the Crusades. So strong a magnet was Jerusalem that it drew out the creative imagination of even those separated from it by great distance, from as far north as Scandinavia to as far east as present-day China. This publication is the first to define these four centuries as a singularly creative moment in a singularly complex city. Through absorbing essays and incisive discussions of nearly 200 works of art, Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven explores not only the meaning of the city to its many faiths and its importance as a destination for tourists and pilgrims but also the aesthetic strands that enhanced and enlivened the medieval city that served as the crossroads of the known world.

Criminalization/Assimilation traces how Classical Hollywood films constructed America’s image of Chinese Americans from their criminalization as unwanted immigrants to their eventual acceptance when assimilated citizens, exploiting both America’s yellow peril fears about Chinese immigration and its fascination with Chinatowns. Philippa Gates examines Hollywood’s responses to social issues in Chinatown communities, primarily immigration, racism, drug trafficking, and prostitution, as well as the impact of industry factors including the Production Code and star system on the treatment of those subjects. Looking at over 200 films, Gates reveals the variety of racial representations within American film in the first half of the twentieth century and brings to light not only lost and forgotten films but also the contributions of Asian American actors whose presence onscreen offered important alternatives to Hollywood’s yellowface fabrications of Chinese identity and a resistance to Hollywood’s Orientalist narratives.

This anthology of Solnits essential essays from the past ten years takes the reader from the Pyrenees to the U.S.-Mexican border, from open sky to the deepest mines and offers a panoramic world view enriched by the authors characteristically provocative, inspiring, and hopeful observations.

Providing a concise overview of 40 Hadiths?sayings of the prophet Muhammad?this compilation offers an in-depth investigation of the second essential source of Islamic authority after the Qur?an. Following the prophet?s encouraged tradition of focusing on a select 40 of the proverbs instead of the entire collection, this volume consists of the original Arabic text, English translations, and informative commentary. Compiled from the works of prominent Muslim scholar Fethullah Glen, this study provides a clear portrait of how the prophet Muhammad established the principles of Islamic life through his teachings.

Abridgment of the Compendium of Ologies and Aphorisms