Most Popular Books by Michael Jackson

An ice-bound New England pond utterly still, though racked with sub-glacial groans serves as an image of a mind overwhelmed one moment by troubling memories, the next by the peace that passes all understanding. In his new collection, Michael Jackson explores the impact on a poets consciousness of past and present events both personal and historical - and the possibility of transcendence in love and creative work. Without ever submitting to bland fashion or to clique, Michael Jackson for almost fifty years has written poetry which is that of a man confronting the things happening of his time, poems probing at that recurrent query, where does one take ones place in the terrible parades of history. There is no final reply. But by love, by compassion, by constant attention to what is said and how it is written, the questioning itself, with luck, sustains. What one hears in his readings is the modest, confident, international voice that drives his poems, the conversing of a man who, as ever, is on one road to find another. Vincent OSullivan.

Following Queen Elizabeth II''s historic Diamond Jubilee in 2012, there is renewed interest in the institution of the Crown in Canada and the roles of the queen, governor general, and lieutenant governor. Author D. Michael Jackson traces the story of the monarchy and the Crown and shows how they are integral to Canada''s parliamentary democracy.

Philosophical meditations on a series of journeys the author has taken to various places around the world.

Through sixty-one beautifully crafted, concise essays, the anthropologist Michael Jackson reflects on life situations where we are sometimes thrown open to new ways of understanding ourselves and connecting with others.

Now in paperback Ours is an era of uprootedness, with fewer and fewer people living out their lives where they are born. At such a time, in such a world, what does it mean to be "at home?" Perhaps among a nomadic people, for whom dwelling is not synonymous with being housed and settled, the search for an answer to this question might lead to a new way of thinking about home and homelessness, exile and belonging. First published by Duke University Press in 1995, At Home in the World is the story of just such a search, chronicling Jackson''s experience among the Warlpiri of the Tanami Desert in Central Australia where he lived, worked, and traveled intermittently over three years. Blending narrative ethnography, empirical research, philosophy, and poetry, Jackson construes the meaning of home existentially, as a metaphor for the balance people try to strike between the world they call their own and the world they see as "other." Home is never a stable essence, therefore, but a constantly negotiated relationship between being closed and open, acting and being acted upon. At once a moving depiction of an aboriginal culture, and a meditation on the practice of anthropology, At Home in the World is a timely reflection on how, in defining home, we continue to define ourselves.

This companion guide to malt whisky describes 330 single malts from 100 distilleries, everything from famous brands to rare special bottlings. Ilustrated with maps, labels, photographs, and lively commentary, there is also a section with suggestions on visiting Scottish distilleries.

The ingenious ways dilemmas are addressed in non-Western traditions Dilemmas explores some of the most pressing existential problems of our times, from climate change, political conflict, and social injustice, to balancing one’s own needs against those of others. Pushing back against the tendency to think of dilemmas as clear-cut binary choices, renowned anthropologist Michael Jackson shows us some of the ingenious ways that dilemmas are addressed in non-Western thought and oral traditions, as well as in Western philosophy. Drawing on examples from myth, literature, and his extensive ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa and Aboriginal Australia, each of thirteen chapters examines a particular dilemma and how it is experienced, circumvented, or reimagined. From the struggles of the Aboriginal people of Central Australia for land rights to Walter Benjamin’s harrowing journey across the Pyrenees as he fled German-occupied France in 1940; from the story of a suburban family in Aotearoa New Zealand adjusting to life in a commune to the dilemmas of migrants from the Global South trying to reconcile their search for a better life with their longing for home—Jackson interweaves philosophical reflections, insights from his anthropological fieldwork, and individual life stories. In striking a balance between our contradictory impulses to be both apart from and together with others, Jackson makes a case against identitarian essentialism, showing us how the oppositional thinking through which we often frame our contemporary dilemmas may be overcome.

Criminal Law in Hong Kong offers a clear and comprehensive account of the general principles of criminal law in Hong Kong and will be useful to students, practitioners, and all who are responsible for or interested in the administration and practice of the criminal justice system in Hong Kong.

The reminiscences of an anthropologist revisiting the site of his fieldwork from the 1970s; it is also an account of the life of a prominent politician (and friend of the author) in Sierra Leone.

Profiles more than 450 beers from around the world and discusses which beers taste best, what beer goes with what food, how beer is made, where the best beer comes from, and other related topics.

THE ACCIDENTAL ANTHROPOLOGIST is a fascinating, impeccably written memoir, or more accurately, a series of fragments. Compelling and absorbing as well as intense and insightful, Jackson writes a far from classically auto-biographical text. There is nothing predictable about the mode or incidents he has chosen to write about: this is literary memoir at its best and most inventive. Jackson has a fascination with the concept of personal metamorphosis, the idea that a life can be dismantled and reassembled in a different country and set of relation-ships. And throughout the story the author makes a pretty good fist of living the theory. The intimacy of the first chapter ''Intensive Care'' engages the reader immediately. Jackson''s experiences begin with his earnest portrayal of young adulthood in Wellington where he associates on the fringes with many of the literary figures of the early 60s, Bob Lowry, Fleur Adcock, James K. Baxter, R.A.K. Mason and the artist McCahon. Jackson finds himself homeless in London where he''s drawn to help the poor and eventually finds his way to Cambridge where he stumbles upon anthropology. His subsequent ethnographic fieldwork takes him to the Congo, Sierra Leone, and outback Australia. Jackson makes it clear that our lives are barely our own, they belong as much to the people, the landscapes, the influences of thought and ideology that absorb us. He excells at the intensely personal and captivates with this masterful work. THE ACCIDENTAL ANTHROPOLOGIST is a challenging and magnificent memoir; much of it is spellbinding, astute and disquieting.

In How Lifeworlds Work, distinguished anthropologist of religion Michael Jackson starts from the premise that individual well-being and social viability depend on a vital relationship between inner and outer realities, self and other, desire and constraint. In asking how lifeworlds ''work, '' Jackson wants to trace the production of one''s individual and communal life while also understanding how people create emotionally satisfying lives through reciprocal relations with people, objects, animals, and ideas. In other words, how do the ritual structures of the outer and the emotional structures of the inner meet? Jackson brings his signature phenomenological approach to bear on the issue of how the dynamic, temporally inflected tension between order and affect is negotiated. By mixing ethnography, philosophy, and personal reflection, Jackson produces a work that is in some ways his definitive and most intimate statement on a lifetime of study.

Most people have a story to tell about a remarkable coincidence that in some instances changed the course of their lives. These uncanny occurrences have been variously interpreted as evidence of divine influence, fate, or the collective unconscious. Less common are explanations that explore the social situations and personal preoccupations of the individuals who place the most weight on coincidences. Drawing on a variety of coincidence stories, renowned anthropologist Michael Jackson builds a case for seeing them as allegories of separation and loss—revealing the hope of repairing sundered lives, reconnecting estranged friends, reuniting distant kin, closing the gap between people and their gods, and achieving a sense of emotional and social connectedness with others in a fragmented world.

Packed with fascinating information on each region of the beer-producing world and tasting notes that are the product of first-hand research, this pocket guide is one companion discriminating beer drinkers won''t want to be without.

In The Genealogical Imagination Michael Jackson juxtaposes ethnographic and imaginative writing to explore intergenerational trauma and temporality. Drawing on over fifty years of fieldwork, Jackson recounts the 150-year history of a Sierra Leone family through its periods of prosperity and powerlessness, war and peace, jihad and migration. Jackson also offers a fictionalized narrative loosely based on his family history and fieldwork in northeastern Australia that traces how the trauma of wartime in one generation can reverberate into the next. In both stories Jackson reflects on different modes of being-in-time, demonstrating how genealogical time flows in stops and starts—linear at times, discontinuous at others—as current generations reckon with their relationships to their ancestors. Genealogy, Jackson demonstrates, becomes a powerful model for understanding our experience of being-in-the-world, as nobody can escape kinship and the pull of the past. Unconventional and evocative, The Genealogical Imagination offers a nuanced account of how lives are lived, while it pushes the bounds of the forms that scholarship can take.

Experience a game-by-game account of the magical 1979 Houston Oilers season in "Red, White, and Columbia Blue: Chasing the Dream with the 1979 Houston Oilers." Author Jackson Michael interviewed several Oilers for this authoritative and insightful portrait of one of the most beloved NFL teams of the 1970s. Step onto the field with the Oilers during a Thanksgiving Day classic at Dallas, a monumental playoff win at San Diego, and for the famous "Mike Renfro Play" during the 1979 AFC Championship Game at Pittsburgh. Walk into the huddle with quarterback Dan Pastorini and feel the excitement of Earl Campbell''s touchdowns. Learn the Oilers'' defensive schemes with defensive coordinator Ed Biles and linebacker Gregg Bingham. Cheer on the Oilers in a rollicking Astrodome and glow in the memories of Oiler greats such as Elvin Bethea, Robert Brazile, Ken Burrough, and Carl Mauck as they share some of their favorite stories about the team and its legendary coach, Bum Phillips.Certain to be cherished by Oiler fans, "Red, White, and Columbia Blue" guides readers on a journey through a once-in-a-lifetime season by a team that captured the hearts of football fans across the country. You won''t want to miss this wonderful read about an unforgettable team. Jackson Michael is the writer and director of the Houston Oilers documentary "We Were the Oilers: The Luv Ya Blue Era! and author of the acclaimed NFL history book, The Game before the Money." He hosts two football-related podcasts.

Anthropologist Michael Jackson predicates his intellectual autobiography, Worlds Within and Worlds Without, on the view that works and lives are intimately entangled. Through a skillful interweaving of personal and ethnographic descriptions, he focuses on the imaginative and practical ways human beings negotiate the space between worlds they call their own and worlds they regard as lying beyond their immediate purview. Whether the worlds that elude our empirical grasp are identified with divinities or the dead, ether or earth, history or myth, the Internet, or the nation state, we experience them ambivalently, as potential sources of wellbeing and as possible threats to our very existence. Closing ourselves off from the world is not an option, for our humanity depends on the ties that bind us to significant others, and others to us. As Jackson shows, the relationship between the familiar and the foreign is not only an existential issue that all human beings address in one way or another. It is a methodological issue for anthropologists concerned with the complementarity of individual and collective perspectivesethnos and anthropos, the intrapsychic and the intersubjective.

This this revised, updated edition of his pocket classic, "the world''s leading beer critic" ("The Wall Street Journal") takes readers on a tour of the international brew scene, giving special emphasis to the fine brews produced on this continent. Maps.

Those who leave their homelands, either under duress or by design, will see them in a different light than those who have stayed put. Michael Jackson argues that the perspective of the expatriate may be compared with what ethnographers call ‘stranger value’. In moving between detachment and deep immersion, this bifocal perspective implicates a bicultural one, which is why Jackson has recourse to Māori traditional knowledge, not in order to impose a Eurocentric interpretation on them, but to show how cross-cultural conversations and interactions can promote new forms of sociality and coexistence.

The Wherewithal of Life engages with current developments in the anthropology of ethics and migration studies to explore in empirical depth and detail the life experiences of three young men – a Ugandan migrant in Copenhagen, a Burkina Faso migrant in Amsterdam, and a Mexican migrant in Boston – in ways that significantly broaden our understanding of the existential situations and ethical dilemmas of those migrating from the global south. Michael Jackson offers the first biographically based phenomenological account of migration and mobility, providing new insights into the various motives, tactics, dilemmas, dreams, and disappointments that characterize contemporary migration. It is argued that the quandaries of African or Mexican migrants are not unique to people moving between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ worlds. While more intensely felt by the young, seeking to find a way out of a world of limited opportunity and circumscribed values, the experiences of transition are familiar to us all, whatever our age, gender, ethnicity or social status – namely, the impossibility of calculating what one may lose in leaving a settled life or home place; what one may gain by risking oneself in an alien environment; the difficulty of striking a balance between personal fulfillment and the moral claims of kinship; and the struggle to know the difference between ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract’ utopias (the first reasonable and worth pursuing; the second hopelessly unattainable).

In this book, ethnographer and poet Michael Jackson addresses the interplay between modes of writing, modes of understanding, and modes of being in the world. Drawing on literary, anthropological and autobiographical sources, he explores writing as a technics akin to ritual, oral storytelling, magic and meditation, that enables us to reach beyond the limits of everyday life and forge virtual relationships and imagined communities. Although Maurice Blanchot wrote of the impossibility of writing, the passion and paradox of literature lies in its attempt to achieve the impossible--a leap of faith that calls to mind the mystic''s dark night of the soul, unrequited love, nostalgic or utopian longing, and the ethnographer''s attempt to know the world from the standpoint of others, to put himself or herself in their place. Every writer, whether of ethnography, poetry, or fiction, imagines that his or her own experiences echo the experiences of others, and that despite the need for isolation and silence his or her work consummates a relationship with them.

Winning strategies for fantasy football players at all skill levels! This book is aimed at fantasy football players who compete against their family and friends and want a fun, easy-to-read guide on how to win. It teaches simple techniques that anyone can use.

The relationship between literature and life can be construed as a counterpoint of fate and freewill. Rather than equating fate to the ‘hand we are dealt’ which is reducible to the social or familial environments into which we are born, this book explores the idea of fate through the books that shape our lives and under whose influence we write. Writing in this sense is seen as beyond its utility of making meaning. It is a way of recovering agency in the face of overwhelming experiences. In juxtaposing factuality and fiction, the author makes a case for a radically empirical approach to human experience.

In this revised edition, a world-renowned spirits writer reviews over 800 malts and writes an extensive new Introduction incorporating his recent visit to every Scottish distillery. 400 full-color photos.

Jackson''s guide is a connoisseur''s reference for single malt whiskies of Scotland, featuring tasting notes and ratings for more than 340 labels, along with details on matching these liquors with food. 35 photos, 3 maps. Full-color illustrations.

The rock superstar offers a candid, inside look at his phenomenal career, private and family life, dreams and goals, friendships, personal relationships, and the painful isolation of fame.

This story of the movie by the same name features superstar Michael Jackson and some young friends as they battle the evil Mr. Big in his plan to enslave all the children in the world with drugs.