Most Popular Books by J. Gordon

Films possess virtually unlimited power for crafting broad interpretations of American history. Nineteenth-century America has proven especially conducive to Hollywood imaginations, producing indelible images like the plight of Davy Crockett and the defenders of the Alamo, Pickett’s doomed charge at Gettysburg, the proliferation and destruction of plantation slavery in the American South, Custer’s fateful decision to divide his forces at Little Big Horn, and the onset of immigration and industrialization that saw Old World lifestyles and customs dissolve amid rapidly changing environments. Balancing historical nuance with passion for cinematic narratives, Writing History with Lightning confronts how movies about nineteenth-century America influence the ways in which mass audiences remember, understand, and envision the nation’s past. In these twenty-six essays—divided by the editors into sections on topics like frontiers, slavery, the Civil War, the Lost Cause, and the West—notable historians engage with films and the historical events they ostensibly depict. Instead of just separating fact from fiction, the essays contemplate the extent to which movies generate and promulgate collective memories of American history. Along with new takes on familiar classics like Young Mr. Lincoln and They Died with Their Boots On, the volume covers several films released in recent years, including The Revenant, 12 Years a Slave, The Birth of a Nation, Free State of Jones, and The Hateful Eight. The authors address Hollywood epics like The Alamo and Amistad, arguing that these movies flatten the historical record to promote nationalist visions. The contributors also examine overlooked films like Hester Street and Daughters of the Dust, considering their portraits of marginalized communities as transformative perspectives on American culture. By surveying films about nineteenth-century America, Writing History with Lightning analyzes how movies create popular understandings of American history and why those interpretations change over time.

“A funny, thought-provoking, and profound memoir about the intersection of Blackness and health. Gordon’s vision of a more just future feels both inspiring and possible.” — Kirkus Starred Review What does self-care look like when struggling to make ends meet, living with a disability, or navigating intersectional marginalization? How can you prioritize well-being while divesting from systems built to destroy you? The answer: Hood Wellness, a groundbreaking exploration that challenges the oppressive systems deeply rooted in health and wellness industries in the United States. In a world where self-care is critical to survival, Gordon offers a revolutionary perspective that celebrates individuals'' unique privileges, challenges, and desires. By defying the norms of multi-billion-dollar industries, Hood Wellness illuminates the possibilities that emerge when we prioritize well-being while divesting from harmful structures. Hood Wellness is also a deep exploration of people forced to overcome harrowing circumstances with little more than communal support and the will to get well. From terminal illness and police violence to embracing gender identity in a society that''s attacking trans and queer rights, each story reflects America''s extreme political, racial, and gender climates. Gordon challenges everything we think we know about wellness by calling out the wellness industry''s inability to include those outside the margins of white, heteronormative identities. She lays plain that self-care as we know it is mostly just surface-level "cute," and communal care is the call-to-action that America needs. Drawing on elements of memoir, self-help, humor, critical race theory, and devastatingly honest storytelling, Gordon guides readers on a transformative journey toward a new paradigm of wellness. This compelling book serves as a beacon, empowering individuals to cultivate resilience and self-love in today''s world. As Gordon shares her personal odyssey, she intertwines the stories of others, revealing her profound discoveries, triumphs, and passions related to self-care. Hood Wellness introduces readers to an inclusive and accessible self-care primer and an approach to well-being that holds the potential to bring about profound change in their lives.

In the early sixties, South Africa’s colonial policies in Namibia served as a testing ground for many key features of its repressive ‘Grand Apartheid’ infrastructure, including strategies for countering anti-apartheid resistance. Exposing the role that anthropologists played, this book analyses how the knowledge used to justify and implement apartheid was created. Understanding these practices and the ways in which South Africa’s experiences in Namibia influenced later policy at home is also critically evaluated, as is the matter of adjudicating the many South African anthropologists who supported the regime.

Like Jane Austen and Henry James, but also like Fyodor Dostoevsky and Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch is a keen student of those egoistic obsessions that cloud our moral understanding. In Iris Murdoch''s Fables of Unselfing, David J. Gordon probes more deeply and comprehensively than any previous critic the intellectual energies, and the ethical imperative of "unselfing", that inform her fiction. Gordon contends that the term fable best describes the kind of novel Murdoch writes because in each a mythmaking purpose interacts with a commitment to realism, shaping the erotic life of fictional characters into a spiritual pilgrimage on which they struggle, more or less unsuccessfully, to overcome the self-centeredness that keeps them away from the Good. The most original element in the fiction, Gordon argues, is not its striking modernization of Plato or its adaptations of nineteenth-century influences, but its intensely creative struggle with Freud. In developing his analysis of her themes, Gordon draws on Murdoch''s work from throughout her forty-year career, showing how each novel grew out of its predecessors and in what ways each is original.

Jan Gordon proposes that a reviled communicational ''interest'' in gossip and its purveyors be given its proper due in the development of the novel in Britain. Commencing with Sir Walter Scott''s historically persecuted (but economically and politically necessary) androgynous voices in caves and concluding with Oscar Wilde''s premature celebration of gossip at the very moment it is transformed from public opinion to public judgment, the author finds gossip to be both deforming and shaping nineteenth century ''letters'' in surprising ways. Like the ignominious orphan-figure of nineteenth-century fiction, gossip is the ''unacknowledged reproduction'' searching for a political antecedence which might lend a legitimacy to its often discontinuous testimony, for a culture historically resistant to obtrusive voices.

With essays exploring metropolitan research institutes, Africans as ethnographers, the transnational features of knowledge production, and the relationship between anthropology and colonial administration, this volume consolidates and extends a range of new research questions focusing on the politics of imperial knowledge.

Here in one source is a wide variety of practical, everydayinformation often required by chemists but seldom found together,if at all, in the standard handbooks, data collections, manuals,and other usual sources. Discussing physical, chemical, andmechanical properties of substances and systems, the authors answersuch questions as: * How do I test for and destroy peroxides in different solventsand what is the best way to purify such solvents? * What are the structure, physical properties, and recentreferences to the use of common-name solvents and solvent aids suchas the "Skellysolves," "Cellosolves," "Crownanes," and"Glymes"? * What is the utility of a particular molecular sieve, orpermeation gel, or epoxy cement, or liquid crystal, and where do Ibuy them and find references to their application? The book is divided into nine chapters and covers properties ofatoms and molecules, spectroscopy, photochemistry, chromatography,kinetics and thermodynamics, various experimental techniques, andmathematical and numerical information, including the definitions,values, and usage rules of the newly adopted International Systemof Units (SI Units). A section on statistical treatment of datawhich provides an actual least-squares computer program is alsoincluded. In the spectroscopy chapter, very extensive andup-to-date collections of spectral correlation data are presentedfor ir, uv-vis, optical rotation, nmr, and mass spectra, along withdata on esr and nqr spectroscopy. Also included is a variety ofhard-to-classify but frequently sought information, such as namesand addresses of microanalysis companies and chemistry publishers,descriptions and commercial sources of atomic and molecular models,and safety data for hazardous chemicals. More than 500 keyreferences are also included, most of which are recent. There areimportant hints and definitions associated with the art as well asthe state of the art for the appropriate subjects. Also foundthroughout the book are about 250 suppliers and directions forobtaining special booklets or other material. Containing a wealth of useful information, The Chemist''sCompanion will be an indispensable guide for students andprofessional chemists in nearly all the chemical disciplines. Inaddition, it will provide for the teacher and student an unusualadjunct for use in a broad cross-section of chemistry courses.

With the help of extensive data tables and figures, this book explains the key facets of rodent thermal physiology, including neurological control and gender and intraspecies variations. The book should therefore find use in government, academic or industrial laboratories whose researchers are working with rodents.

Gordon (anthropology, U. of Vermont) describes the expedition 16 Denver businessmen sponsored to make their city famous by bringing back a man and women who represented the missing link between humans and the lower animals. He presents the photographs that were nearly the only result of the effort, and interprets what they were intended to portray to their creator and his audience. Paper edition (unseen), $24.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Offers an organic approach to child development grounded in the games and activities that are geared to be fun and valuable for children.

The book of Isaiah has been regarded from the earliest Christian period as a key part of the Old Testament''s witness to Jesus Christ. This commentary by highly regarded Old Testament scholar J. Gordon McConville draws on the best of biblical scholarship as well as the Christian tradition to offer a substantive and useful commentary on Isaiah. McConville treats Isaiah as an ancient Israelite document that speaks to twenty-first-century Christians. He examines the text section by section--offering a fresh translation, textual notes, paragraph-level commentary, and theological reflection--and shows how the prophetic words are framed to persuade audiences. Grounded in rigorous scholarship but useful for those who preach and teach, this volume is the second in a new series on the Prophets. Series volumes are both critically engaged and sensitive to the theological contributions of the text. Series editors are Mark J. Boda, McMaster Divinity College, and J. Gordon McConville, University of Gloucestershire.

This book details advances in the studies of chemical dynamics and photochemistry using emerging laser technologies. It examines both theoretical and experimental advances in this field and includes such topics as efficient selectivity in chemical reactions, new pulse shaping techniques, and new tool for realistic control and manipulation of molecules.

This paper reviews the leading ideas that have emerged within two paradigms of price adjustment. Neither, it appears, provides a satisfactory theoretical scheme when taken in isolation. This paper concludes that an attempt to merge the more convincing elements of each is needed, and some suggestions for such a merger are put forward.

Surveys the major religious cults, examines their influence on American society, and discusses deprogramming and the movement against cults

Concise Introduction to Property Law is first and foremost a casebook, designed to expose first year law students to the rich heritage of American Property Law through the study of court decisions. Instructors will find many of the familiar cases used in most Property textbooks, as well as many new ones. The notes in all chapters not only point out legal developments and additional cases, but also include substantial detail on the historical and social context in which the principal cases arose. The notes also provide a glimpse into the lives of the parties to the cases, some of whom are famous and many of whom are not. The book also has a definite inter-state comparative law perspective. This is primarily manifested by special attention to cases arising in the state of Hawaii, the one American jurisdiction whose property history departs from the national experience in dramatic ways. Concise Introduction to Property also has a Teacher''s Manual (available only to professors). This book also is available in a three-hole punched, alternative loose-leaf version printed on 8.5 x 11 inch paper with wider margins and with the same pagination as the hardbound book.