Fiction

This book questions many key assumptions about the efficacy of NGOs and civil society in development. It provides suggestions on how to improve NGO performance and how NGOs can better link with local African initiatives and agendas. Beginning in the 1980s, sub-Saharan Africa witnessed a veritable explosion of NGOs and CSOs engaged in efforts to develop the subcontinent. Often praised for their commitment, flexibility, close contact with grassroots movements and marginalized groups, these organizations have become the darlings of donors and the UN system.

The fourteen stories in Masters' third collection are set in New England, upstate New York, and various European locales. They range from a late-blooming romance between two shoeshine booth operators to uninvited mourners crashing the funerals of people they don't know, from a felon-turned-chef watching his son sample his savory meatloaf to a dual tale involving two unlikely murderers.

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Martha Egan's collection of seven short stories transcends the limits of regionalism. In "Carnales", a grudge lasting generations ends with a standoff in a village cemetery. The unruly dog in "Mutt" helps a young silversmith learn to stand her ground. In "Time Circles", a trip to a ceremonial in Navajo Country encourages a woman to open both a new business and her heart. The veterinarian in "Guapo" rescues a dog that changes her life forever. A pair of newly arrived hippies learn to play by New Mexico's rules in "La Ranfla".

The hunter becomes the hunted...For two years, Cole Goodwin goes deep undercover to infiltrate the Australian Mafia. The covert investigation busts open the organisation, and the bad guys are safely put away. Unbeknownst to Cole, a lieutenant from the Calabria Mafiosi has been despatched to terminate the main undercover operative. And, too late, Cole realises that someone in the Australian Crime Authority is not quite who he seems...Thus a chase ensues, that takes Cole across three continents, finishing in the Aspromonte Mountains in Italy.

The latest addition to the successful literary cities series by Texas Christian University Press, "Literary El Paso" brings attention to the often overlooked extraordinary literary heritage of this city in far West Texas. El Paso is the largest metropolitan area along the U.S. - Mexico border and is geographically isolated from the rest of Texas. It is in this splendid isolation surrounded by mountains in the midst of the beautiful Chihuahuan Desert that many award-winning writers found their literary voices.

Long before the space race captured the world's attention, K.E. Tsiolkovskii first conceived of multi-stage rockets that would later be adapted as the basis of both the U.S. and Soviet rocket programs. Often called the grandfather of Russian rocketry, this provincial scientist was even sanctioned by Stalin to give a speech from Red Square on May Day 1935, lauding the Soviet technological future while also dreaming and expounding on his own visions of conquering the cosmos.

"Not Even Past" highlights references to nineteenth-century U.S. slavery and anti-Black racism in literary and photographic projects begun during the late 1920s and early 1930s, including novels by William Faulkner and Nella Larsen, and portraits by Carl Van Vechten. These texts share a representational crisis, in which distinctions between present, quotidian racism and a massive, fully racialized historical trauma disappear.

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Close on the heels of the American public's early enthusiasm over the airplane came aviation stories for the young. From 1910 until the early 1960s, they exalted flight and painted the airplane as the most modern and adventuresome of machines. Most of the books were directed at boys; however, a substantial number sought a girls' audience. Erisman's account of several aviation series and other aviation books for girls fills a gap in the history and criticism of American popular culture.

As a teenager, Manuel Chavez (1910-1996) left his native New Mexico for over a decade of study at the St. Francis Seraphic Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, and other midwestern institutions. Included in his curriculum was an introduction to literature and the arts that piqued an interest that would follow him the remainder of his life. Upon returning to New Mexico, he was ordained Fray Angelico Chavez and would become one of New Mexico's most important twentieth-century writers.

This combination of accessible writing, strong theoretical framing of a smart research question, comparative research design, and rich empirical data mined insightfully makes for a strong sociological argument and an engaging read. Teske argues that the conceptual categories underlying both rational actor and antirational actor approaches to political participation undermine any real understanding of activism by drawing a false dichotomy between self-interested and altruistic motives.