Book Signing

“Caught in the Storm: Navigating Policy and Practice in the Welfare Reform Era,” a new book written by Dr. Miguel Ferguson, Heather Neuroth-Gatlin and Dr. Stacey Borasky, is a narrative about the staff and clients at Helping Hands, a small nonprofit social service agency set in the fictional community of River City. The issues about social welfare policy, program administration, and client practice that the authors choose to highlight emerge through action and dialogue among the book’s characters. The story’s protagonist, Martha, is the insightful and energetic executive director at Helping Hands. Martha and her staff reach out to other nonprofit and faith-based organizations to implement a welfare-to-work program that will make a difference in the lives of the low-income clients they serve.

Join Si Kahn for a discussion of his new book "Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice" and learn about the work of Grassroots Leadership. This latest work by the legendary activist, musician and author, is a different kind of community organizing book. As with other books, including some by Kahn himself, it does outline many of the practical tactics organizers use. But it's also about community organizing as a way of thinking and a way of life. "Creative Community Organizing" suggests ways that readers can identify and analyze the various options for action, weigh the positives and negatives and make choices among them. In other words, focus on the end goal and then determine the best strategies, tactics and methods to achieve that goal. It will help established community organizers become more creative and innovative, encourage them to question established principles and decide whether or not they still work.

Globetrotting troublemaker John Ross will read from his two new cult classics: "Iraqigirl", the diary of a teenager coming of age under U.S. occupation in Mosul, Iraq that has been called "an Anne Frank for our time", and "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City", the tangled tale of the most contaminated, corrupt, crime-ridden, and chaotic city in the Americas that has just been selected as "book of the year" by the San Antonio Express News.

Becker's new book, Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire, provides a sharp analysis of the struggle for Palestine—from the division of the Middle East by Western powers and the Zionist settler movement, to the founding of Israel and its role as a watchdog for U.S.
interests, to present-day conflicts and the prospects for a just resolution. Join us for a presentation and discussion on Palestine. It promises to interest both long-term Palestinian rights activists and those who are new to understanding the issue.

Dr. Ben Brower discusses his book, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902.

In the mid-nineteenth century, French colonial leaders in Algeria started southward into the Sahara, beginning a fifty-year period of violence. Lying in the shadow of the colonization of northern Algeria, which claimed the lives of over a million people, French empire in the Sahara sought power through physical force as it had elsewhere; yet violence in the Algerian Sahara followed a more complicated logic than the old argument that it was simply a way to get empire on the cheap.

A Brief and Arguably Entertaining evening With Margaret Killjoy, editor of Mythmakers & Lawbreakers. Discuss the role of storytelling in the an- archist movement! Learn about novelist assassins, post-colo- nial african squatters, writers who fought in revolutions and went on to write childrens’ stories! Find out what Tolkien, Camus, Orwell, and Kafka have to say about anarchism!

THE FOURTH HERITAGE:
A BOOK ABOUT THE INTEGRATION OF AFRICAN TRIBAL HERITAGES WITH RELIGIOUS AND EUROPEAN LEGACIES

BOOK SIGNING AND PRESENTATION:
When: Wed October 21st at 7:30 PM
Place: MonkeyWrench Books, 110 E. North Loop
Find book details at WWW.4THHERITAGE.COM

About the book...

This is a must-read for anyone interested in learning about the African tribal mind and its interpretation of the world as dominated by Eurocentric ideals.

Former Black Panther and Angola 3 political prisoner Robert Hillary King speaks on his new book "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King."  In 1970, a jury convicted Robert Hillary King of a crime he did not commit and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He became a member of the Black Panther Party while in Angola State Penitentiary, successfully organizing prisoners to improve conditions. In return, prison authorities beat him, starved him, and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a six by nine foot cell for 29 years as one of the Angola 3. In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free.

After a lifetime of identifying as an atheist, Robert Jensen joined a Christian church. Many of Jensen’s radical activist colleagues wondered if he had lost his mind. The jury is still out on that, but in his new book, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, Jensen makes a case for a theology that can be consistent with radical politics. Leaving behind supernatural claims, Jensen uses the text and traditions of Christianity to argue for a theology and politics that takes seriously the radical action needed to deal with the multiple crises we face today.

Most Americans know we’ve got a problem: an addiction to oil that taxes the environment, entangles us in costly foreign policies, and threatens the nation’s long-term stability. But few are informed or empowered enough to do much about it. Enter Josh Tickell, an expert young activist who, driven by his own emotionally charged motives, shuttles us on a revelatory, whirlwind journey to unravel this addiction—from its historical origins to political constructs that support it, to alternatives available now and the steps we can take to change things. Tickell tracks the rising domination of the petrochemical industry—from Rockefeller’s strategy to halt ethanol use in Ford’s first cars to the mysterious death of Rudolph Diesel at the height of his biodiesel engine’s popularization, to our government’s choice to declare war after 9/11, rather than wean the country from fossil fuel.