A Good Country

Download or read book A Good Country written by Sofia Ali-Khan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading advocate for social justice excavates the history of forced migration in the twelve American towns she’s called home, revealing how White supremacy has fundamentally shaped the nation. “At a time when many would rather ban or bury the truth, Ali-Khan bravely faces it in this bracing and necessary book.”—Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies Sofia Ali-Khan’s parents emigrated from Pakistan to America, believing it would be a good country. With a nerdy interest in American folk history and a devotion to the rule of law, Ali-Khan would pursue a career in social justice, serving some of America’s most vulnerable communities. By the time she had children of her own—having lived, worked, and worshipped in twelve different towns across the nation—Ali-Khan felt deeply American, maybe even a little extra American for having seen so much of the country. But in the wake of 9/11, and on the cusp of the 2016 election, Ali-Khan’s dream of a good life felt under constant threat. As the vitriolic attacks on Islam and Muslims intensified, she wondered if the American dream had ever applied to families like her own, and if she had gravely misunderstood her home. In A Good Country, Ali-Khan revisits the color lines in each of her twelve towns, unearthing the half-buried histories of forced migration that still shape every state, town, and reservation in America today. From the surprising origins of America’s Chinatowns, the expulsion of Maroon and Seminole people during the conquest of Florida, to Virginia’s stake in breeding humans for sale, Ali-Khan reveals how America’s settler colonial origins have defined the law and landscape to maintain a White America. She braids this historical exploration with her own story, providing an intimate perspective on the modern racialization of American Muslims and why she chose to leave the United States. Equal parts memoir, history, and current events, A Good Country presents a vital portrait of our nation, its people, and the pathway to a better future.

Download or read book A Good Country written by Laleh Khadivi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "powerful" (NYT) timely novel about the radicalization of a Muslim teen in California--about where identity truly lies and how we find it. Laguna Beach, California, 2011. Alireza Courdee, a 16-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner. He loses his virginity, takes up surfing, and sneaks away to all-night raves. For the first time, Reza--now Rez--feels like an American teen. Life is smooth; even lying to his strict parents comes easily. But then he changes again, falling out with the bad-boy surfers and in with a group of kids more awake to the world around them, who share his background, and whose ideas fill him with a very different sense of purpose. Within a year, Reza and his girlfriend are making their way to Syria to be part of a Muslim nation rising from the ashes of the civil war. Timely, nuanced, and emotionally forceful, A Good Country is a gorgeous meditation on modern life, religious radicalization, and a young man caught among vastly different worlds. What we are left with at the dramatic end is not an assessment of good or evil, East versus West, but a lingering question that applies to all modern souls: Do we decide how to live, or is our life decided for us?

Download or read book The Good Country Equation written by Simon Anholt and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Not only does Anholt explain the challenges facing the world with unique clarity, he also provides genuinely new, informative, practical, innovative solutions. . . . The book is a must-read for anyone who cares about humanity's shared future.” —H. E. Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Farmaajo), President of the Federal Republic of Somalia Simon Anholt has spent decades helping countries from Austria to Zambia to improve their international standing. Using colorful descriptions of his experiences—dining with Vladimir Putin at his country home, taking a group of Felipe Calderon's advisors on their first Mexico City subway ride, touring a beautiful new government hospital in Afghanistan that nobody would use because it was in Taliban-controlled territory—he tells how he began finding answers to that question. Ultimately, Anholt hit on the Good Country Equation, a formula for encouraging international cooperation and reinventing education for a globalized era. Anholt even offers a “selfish” argument for cooperation: he shows that it generates goodwill, which in turn translates into increased trade, foreign investment, tourism, talent attraction, and even domestic electoral success. Anholt insists we can change the way countries behave and the way people are educated in a single generation—because that's all the time we have.

Download or read book How to Live in the Country written by Tom Hodgkinson and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'One of those enthusiasts whose enthusiasm is hard to resist . . . Always beguiling' Daily Mail 'Hugely inspiring even when it is most bonkers' Sarah Bakewell, New Statesman 'A combination of almanac, commonplace book and diary, this is a tasty oddity . . . Richly entertaining' Independent As the pandemic has caused us all to re-evaluate our lives, becoming more self-reliant and dwelling in closer harmony with nature have emerged as important priorities. Many of us have decided to up sticks and leave the city behind for a less frenetic existence in the country. Whether you've already made your move, or are dreaming of doing so one day, this is the book for you. Covering beekeeping, poultry rearing, pig farming, bread-making, wood-chopping, fire-laying, bartering and much more, How to Live in the Country is the perfect source of inspiration for old hand and beginners alike: useful, informative but also refreshingly honest and realistic. Tom Hodgkinson draws on the wisdom of an eclectic range of thinkers and writers as he guides us through each month of the year, giving lists of tasks for both garden and animal husbandry, offering tips and shortcuts, and weaving in stories about his own experience of raising a young family in rural Devon.

Download or read book Why Nations Fail written by Daron Acemoglu and published by Currency. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

Download or read book The Good Country written by Bain Attwood and published by . This book was released on 2023-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the generalisations of national and colonial history, what can we know about how Aboriginal nations interacted with the British settlers who invaded their country, the men appointed by the imperial and colonial governments to protect them, and each other? In The Good Country Bain Attwood makes a major contribution to our knowledge of this period by providing a superbly researched, finely grained local history of the Djadja Wurrung people of Central Victoria. The story is a shocking one, of destruction, decimation and dispossession, but, equally powerfully, it is not one of unceasing conflict. With reference to an unusually rich historical record, concepts such as the frontier and resistance emerge as inadequate in this context. Attwood recovers a good deal of the modus vivendi that the Djadja Wurrung reached with sympathetic protectors, pastoralists and gold diggers, showing how they both adopted and adapted to these intruders to remain in their own country, at least for a time. Finally, drawing past and present together, Attwood relates the remarkable story of the revival of the Djadja Wurrung in recent times as they have sought to become their own historians.

Download or read book A Terrible Country written by Keith Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Hilarious. . . . To understand Russia, read A Terrible Country.” —Time "This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best books you'll read this year." —Ann Levin, Associated Press A New York Times Editors' Choice Named a Best Book of 2018 by Bookforum, Nylon, Esquire, and Vulture A literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyalty—from a founding editor of n+1 and the author of Raising Raffi When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It’s the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia’s violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can’t always remember who he is. Andrei learns to navigate Putin’s Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly—but surprisingly sharp!—grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a café to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother’s health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei’s politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid. A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation.