New Books by Former Fellows
A Fistful of Diamonds: Gemstone Thrillers
By John B. Robinson
A suite of priceless diamonds surfaces in Central Africa. Fast-talking gem expert Lonny Cushman wants them. As cover, he chaperones a young seminarian to Rwanda in search of her missing father. Once there, Lonny chases the diamonds through the killing fields of the Congo. Survival depends on negotiating the bloody machinery that benefits from the conflict diamond trade—Islamic jihadis, corrupt army officers, Israeli diamantaires, and Ukrainian arms dealers. Can he save himself, the diamonds, and the seminarian from a terrible end?
McBooks Press, Inc.
ISBN-13: 9781590131503
Yugoslavia—Oblique Insights and Observations
By Dennison Rusinow, Edited by Gale Stokes
As a long-time resident of Yugoslavia during the Cold War years, journalist/historian Dennison Rusinow had a bird's eye seat to view Marshal Josip Broz Tito trying to fit his square hybrid socialist peg into the Soviet Union's round hole.
Essays on a variety of topics explore "the first American-style supermarket and its challenge to traditional outdoor markets; the lessons of a Serbian holiday feast (Slava); the resignation of Vice President Aleksandar Rankovic; the Croation political purge of 1971; ethnic divides and the rise of nationalism throughout the country; the tension between conservative and liberal forces in Yugoslav politics; and the student revolt at Belgrade University in 1968.
Rusinow was a research professor at the University Center for International Studies and emeritus professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and has authored five books. Editor Stokes is Professor of History Emeritus at Rice University.
Available from Amazon
The Upside-Down Tree: India’s Changing Future
By Richard Connerney
The Upside-Down Tree presents the 'other' India, beyond the call centers of Bangalore and Delhi and Westernized cities like Mumbai—a huge slice of humanity that remains invisible and impenetrable to most Americans. Exploring the realities of agriculture, business, the environment, politics, the economy, marriage, language and the arts, the author introduces the real people of India. At the heart of each chapter lies an epiphany about Indian culture—Copernican intellectual shifts, radical reverses in the way the author made sense of the environment when the evidence seemed to support one conclusion but further experience pointed to a different answer.
Algora Publishing, March 2009
ISBN-13: 9780875866482
www.algora.com/274/book/details.html
search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&z=y&EAN=0875866484
To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan
By Nicholas Schmidle
In To Live or to Perish Forever, Nicholas Schmidle takes readers to Pakistan’s rioting streets, to Taliban camps in the North-West Frontier Province, and on many surprising adventures as he provides a contemporary history of this country long riven by internal conflict. With the intimacy and good humor available only to the most fearless and open-eyed reporters, Schmidle narrates what was arguably the most turbulent period of Pakistan’s recent history, a time when President Pervez Musharraf lost his power and the Taliban found theirs, and when Americans began to realize that Pakistan’s fate is inextricably linked with our own.
In February 2006 Schmidle had traveled to Pakistan hoping to learn about the place dubbed “the most dangerous country in the world.” It was while there that he befriended a radical cleric (who became an enemy of the state and was killed), came to crave the smell of tear gas (because it assured him that he was sufficiently close to the action), and in the end, was deported by the Pakistani authorities, managed to get back into the country, and was chased out a second time.
Henry Holt and Co., On Sale: May 12, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8938-7, ISBN-10: 0-8050-8938-1
www.nicholasschmidle.com/index.html
us.macmillan.com/toliveortoperishforever
Interview with Nicholas Schmidle, C-Span, May 10, 2009
The Teeth May Smile But the Heart Does Not Forget (Hardcover)
By Andrew Rice
From Rwanda to Sierra Leone, African countries recovering from tyranny and war are facing an impossible dilemma: to overlook past atrocities for the sake of peace or to seek catharsis through tribunals and truth commissions. Uganda chose the path of forgetting: after Idi Amin’s reign was overthrown, the new government opted for amnesty for his henchmen rather than prolonged conflict.
Ugandans tried to bury their history, but reminders of the truth were never far from view. A stray clue to the 1972 disappearance of Eliphaz Laki led his son to a shallow grave—and then to three executioners, among them Amin’s chief of staff. Laki’s discovery resulted in a trial that gave voice to a nation’s past: as lawyers argued, tribes clashed, and Laki pressed for justice, the trial offered Ugandans a promise of the reckoning they had been so long denied.
For four years, Andrew Rice followed the trial, crossing Uganda to investigate Amin’s legacy and the limits of reconciliation. At once a mystery, a historical accounting, and a portrait of modern Africa, The Teeth May Smile But the Heart Does Not Forget is above all an exploration of how—and whether—the past can be laid to rest.
Metropolitan Books, On Sale: May 26, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8050-7965-4, ISBN-10: 0-8050-7965-3
us.macmillan.com/theteethmaysmilebuttheheartdoesnotforget
Georgia Diary
A Chronicle of War and Political Chaos
in the Post-Soviet Caucasus
Expanded Edition
By Thomas Goltz
Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Georgia fell prey to a series of power struggles, rampant crime and corruption, secessionist wars, and the spillover of the war in Chechnya. Thomas Goltz traces these developments with the same vivid, personal narrative style that made his previous books Azerbaijan Diary and Chechnya Diary so compelling. Featuring memorable portraits of individuals in high places and low, Georgia Diary is the ‘unknown’ story of the key-to-the-Caucasus country from 1992 through the resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze, the ‘Rose Revolution,’ and the rise of Mikheil Saakashvili…
Now UPDATED as a Paperback with a New Epilogue on the ‘Olympics War’ with Russia of August 2008!
M.E. Sharpe, January 2009; 300 pages, maps, photographs; ISBN 0-7656-1710-2
Traditional Themes in Japanese Art
By Charles R. Temple
An indispensable reference work for students, historians, gallery owners, art dealers, and the general reader, Traditional Themes in Japanese Art draws from pioneer works in the field to provide easy-to-read entries that introduce colorful figures and fascinating events from Japanese history, mythology, legend, and folklore. Malicious ghosts appear in human or in animal guise, often tormenting those who see them. Benevolent and malevolent wizards comfort or abuse human beings. Demons abound; dragons let water flow or withhold it from parched landscapes; shape shifters, like the tea-kettle badger, bring evil into the world. Torments are delivered by supernatural beings along with destructive and bloody wars between family clans for political power. The author is a writer and book publisher who lived for many years in Japan as an editor/book designer with John Weatherhill, Inc, publisher of elegant books on Japanese and Chinese art. He now resides in San Francisco, California.
Website: www.songoku27.com
Available: amazon.com; regentpress.net; B&N.com
Dist. to the Trade by INGRAM and Baker & Taylor
Published by REGENT PRESS
2747 Regent Street
Berkeley, CA 94705
www.regentpress.net
Retrieving Times
By Red Austin
www.granvilleaustin.com
Published by: WHITE RIVER PRESS (Oct 2008) ISBN-13: 978-1-93505-204-3
Granville Austin, widely known by his life-long nickname, Red, was an ICWA fellow from 1960-1966, working on India. After publishing two political histories of the Indian Constitution he has relaxed with a memoir of Norwich, Vermont. Published this October (2008), it draws portraits of the people, recounts their ways and livelihoods, their characters and wisdom, and their primary school, which he attended for eight years starting in 1932. The culture critic of the Washington Post called Retrieving Times “the biography of a beloved place...something astonishing...a town remembered in its detail”; Institute alumnus David Hapgood says “it’s a wonderful book”, full of “delicious detail”. Retrieving Times is available at your local bookstore, on the shelf or by order, and from www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, or Red directly. If you wish to know more about Red Austin, you may “google” him under Granville Austin.
Stomp Rockets Catapults and Kaleidoscopes; 30+ Amazing Science Projects You Can Build for Less than $1
By Curt Gabrielson
Published by CHICAGO UNIVERSITY PRESS (Feb. 2008) ISBN: 9781556527371
Former East Timor Fellow Curt Gabrielson is the Director of the Watsonville Science Workshop. The Workshop is a community-based non-profit program that offers underserved youth living in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods a fun and safe way to explore their world through science. The WSW provides an informal space to investigate life and physical science after school. www.scienceworkshops.org/site/watsonville Curt’s first book, Stomp Rockets Catapults and Kaleidoscopes; 30+ Amazing Science Projects You Can Build for Less than $1 is available through Amazon. He has a contract for a second book: Go Machines, Proto-robots and Kinetic Contraptions: Amazing Projects With a Hobby Motor for Around $1.
An American Witness to India’s Partition
By Philips Talbot
Published by SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd. (Sept. 2007) ISBN: 9780761936183 www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc. nav?prodId=Book232382
“In 1938 the New York-based Institute of Current World Affairs awarded 23-year-old Phillips Talbot a fellowship with a mandate: visit South Asia and learn about the intricacies of life in India. Till 1950, Talbot graphically recounted the buildup to Indian and Pakistani independence, and the early experiences of the new states in the form of several letters to the institute. Talbot’s reports from the field, presented here in the original, offer a kaleidoscope of first-hand observations: on student life at the Aligarh Muslim University, local life in a small Muslim community in Kashmir, a Vedic ashram in Lahore, Tagore’s Shantiniketan, Gandhi’s Sevagram, crucial sessions of the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League, the Kodaikanal Ashram Fellowship, Hindu and Muslim urban communities in Lahore and Bombay, Afghanistan, a walk with Gandhi in Noakhali, the parties’ negotiations with Mountbatten that led to independence and more.Written with flair and insight, An American Witness to India’s Partition, provides a perceptive view of South Asian society in its decisive decade.”
Partisan Publics: Communication and Contention across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks
By Ann Mishe
Published by PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS (Oct.2007) ISBN-13 9780691124940 press.princeton.edu/titles/8543.html
Former Brazil Fellow and Rutgers University sociology Professor Ann Mische has published a book about youth activists in Brazil. It is based partly on her fellowship work (1987-90).
News from the Institute and Former Fellows
