A century ago, agriculture was the dominant economic sector in much of Africa. By the 1990s, however, African farmers had declining incomes and were worse off, on average, than those who did not farm. Colonial policies, subsequent 'top-down' statism, and globalization are usually cited as primary causes of this long-term decline. In this unprecedented study of the Igbo region of southeastern Nigeria, Chima Korieh points the way to a more complex and inclusive approach to this issue. Using agricultural change as a lens through which to view socio-economic and cultural change, political struggle, and colonial hegemony, Korieh shows that regional dynamics and local responses also played vital roles in this era of transformation. British attempts to modernize the densely populated Igbo region were focused largely on intensive production of palm oil as a cash crop for export and on the assumption of male dominance within a conventional western hierarchy. This colonial agenda, however, collided with a traditional culture in which females played important social and political roles and male status was closely tied to yam cultivation. Drawing on an astonishing array of sources, including oral interviews, newspapers, private journals, and especially letters of petition from local farmers and traders, Korieh puts the reader in direct contact with ordinary people, evoking a feeling of what it was like to live through the era. As such, The Land Has Changed reveals colonial interactions as negotiated encounters between officials and natives and challenges simplistic notions of a hegemonic colonial state and a compliant native population.

This program is read by the author "Think of it as a Texas version of Hillbilly Elegy." -Bryan Burrough, New York Times bestselling author of The Big Reach and Barbarians at the Gate A brilliant audiobook saga of family, fortune, faith in Texas, where blood is bond and oil is king... In 1892, Bryan Mealer's great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author's father, religion is only an agent for rebellion. In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, "How'd you like to be a millionaire'" Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring's streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight. Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider's journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life. A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. In telling the story of four generations of his family, Bryan Mealer also tells the story of how America came to be. More praise for The Kings of Big Spring: "Bryan Mealer has given us a brilliant, and brilliantly entertaining, portrayal of family, and a bursting-at-the-seams chunk of America in the bargain."-Ben Fountain, bestselling author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk "John Steinbeck meets J.R. Ewing in "The Kings of Big Springs," a hardscrabble chronicle spanning a century of one family's West Texas pursuit of the American dream. Austin writer Bryan Mealer has crafted an irresistible family history...What follows is a multigenerational struggle against powerful forces, from searing droughts to devious bankers, played out against a background of earth-shattering historical events, including two world war

Learn the important role Black Canadian's have played, and will continue to play, in the development of Canada.

In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the US national anthem. By "taking a knee," Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick's simple act spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent symbol of resistance to America's persistent racial inequality. Critically acclaimed sports journalist and author of A People's History of Sports in the United States, Dave Zirin chronicles "the Kaepernick effect" for the first time, through interviews with a broad cross-section of professional athletes across many different sports, college stars and high-powered athletic directors, and high school athletes and coaches. In each case, he uncovers the fascinating explanations and motivations behind a mass political movement in sports, through deeply personal and inspiring accounts of risk-taking, activism, and courage both on and off the field. A book about the politics of sport, and the impact of sports on politics, The Kaepernick Effect is for anyone seeking to understand an essential dimension of the new movement for racial justice in America.

"The Invisible Communityis a timely addition to the literature on immigrant integration in Quebec. The South Asian population of Quebec is generally understudied and this book helps fill that gap, providing English-language readers with valuable insights into the complexities of both community life and individual lives." Victor Satzewich, McMaster University and author of Racism in Canada.

Images of First Nations people have always been fundamental to Canadian culture. From the paintings and photographs of the 19th century to the Mounted Police sagas and the spectacle of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; from the performances of Pauline Johnson, Grey Owl, and Buffalo Long Lance to the media images of Oka and the Vancouver Winter Olympics--the Imaginary Indian is ever with us, oscillating throughout our history from friend to foe, from Noble Savage to bloodthirsty warrior, from debased alcoholic to wise elder, from monosyllabic "squaw" to eloquent princess, from enemy of progress to protector of the environment.

In today's interconnected global village, Iran remains a mystery to much of the rest of the world especially to those living in the United States and the west. While the country is often synonymous with rogue behavior on the world stage, there is also another, rarely seen side to this nation of 80 million, including being home to the greatest number of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel, and having the largest transsexual population in the region, among other unexpected surprises. The Heartbeat of Iran takes us on a journey into everyday life in Iran, where we meet the diverse people who make up the country's delicate socio-cultural, political, and religious mosaic. Through textured portraits of regular Iranians, from a blind Sunni environmental activist to the gay son of a general, from Iran's first female race car driver to a young rabbi who is training the future generation of Jewish rabbis in Israel's enemy state, The Heartbeat of Iran reveals a people whose dreams and fears mirror that of millions of others worldwide, and who yearn to join an international community that often views them through the blur of a hostile political fog.

Until recently, McClelland and Stewart had been known as 'The Canadian Publisher,' the country's longest-lived and best independent press. Its dynamic leader Jack McClelland worked with successive provincial and federal governments to help draft policies in the 1960s and 70s which ensured that Canadian stories would, for the first time in the nation's history, be told and published by Canadians. M&S introduced Canadians to themselves while championing the nation's literature, bringing to the world Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Mavis Gallant, Farley Mowat, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, and many others. When 75% of M&S was gifted amidst great fanfare to the University of Toronto on Canada Day 2000''To achieve the survival of one great Canadian institution,' M&S owner Avie Bennett declared at the time, 'I have given it into the care of another great Canadian institution''one could've assumed that it would remain in Canadian hands and under Canadian control in perpetuity. But one would have been wrong. In her controversial new book, Elaine Dewar reveals for the first time how M&S was sold salami-style to Random House, a division of German media giant Bertelsmann; how smart businessmen and even smarter lawyers danced through the raindrops of the laws put into place to protect Canadian cultural institutions from foreign ownership while cultural bureaucrats looked the other way; and why we should care. It is the story not just of the demise of the country's best independent publisher, it is about the threats, internal and otherwise, facing Canadian culture.'The Handover'is more than just a CanLit How-Done-It: it is essential reading for anyone interested in the telling of Canadian stories.

In our zeal to embrace the wonders of the electronic age, are we sacrificing our literary culture? Renowned critic Sven Birkerts believes the answer is an alarming yes. In The Gutenberg Elegies, he explores the impact of technology on the experience of reading. Drawing on his own passionate, lifelong love of books, Birkerts examines how literature intimately shapes and nourishes the inner life. What does it mean to "hear" a book on audiotape or decipher its words in electronic form on a laptop screen? Can the world created by Henry James exist in an era defined by the work of Bill Gates? Are books as we know them—volumes printed in ink on paper, with pages to be turned as the reading of each page is completed—dead?

At once a celebration of the complex pleasures of reading and a bold challenge to the information technologies of today and tomorrow, The Gutenberg Elegies is an essential volume for anyone who cares about the past and the future of books.