A sparkling anthology of revolt and resistance to orthodoxy and repression. Across the ages and in every continent, people have struggled against those in power and raised their voices in protest—and this unrivalled compendium brings many of them together. From primitive communism in Ancient Greece and Persia, and the Hundred Schools of Thought in Ancient China, via the dissident poets and philosophers of Islam and Judaism, to Galileo, Spinoza, and Giordano Bruno in the Middle Ages, through to the makers of the Dutch and English revolutions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and then the activists and theorists of the French, American, Haitian, Russian, and Chinese revolutions: Olympe de Gouges, John Brown and Frederick Douglass, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Mandelstam, Lu Hsun, and many more. More recently, Eugene Debs, Joe Hill, the Chicago Martyrs, Bhagat Singh and Muntazer al-Zaidi have fought back against oppressive regimes. This anthology, global in scope, presents the voices of dissent through the ages: poems and songs, pamphlets and speeches, plays and manifestos. The Verso Book of Dissent will become an invaluable tool, reminding today’s citizens that these traditions will never die.
African Women Writing Resistance is the first transnational anthology to focus on women’s strategies of resistance to the challenges they face in Africa today. The anthology brings together personal narratives, testimony, interviews, short stories, poetry, performance scripts, folktales, and lyrics. Thematically organized, it presents women’s writing on such issues as intertribal and interethnic conflicts, the degradation of the environment, polygamy, domestic abuse, the controversial traditional practice of female genital cutting, Sharia law, intergenerational tensions, and emigration and exile.
Contributors include internationally recognized authors and activists such as Wangari Maathai and Nawal El Saadawi, as well as a host of vibrant new voices from all over the African continent and from the African diaspora. Interdisciplinary in scope, this collection provides an excellent introduction to contemporary African women’s literature and highlights social issues that are particular to Africa but are also of worldwide concern. It is an essential reference for students of African studies, world literature, anthropology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and women’s studies.
The Speaker Anthology, Vol. 1 is a collection of 101 inspiring stories from the most successful motivational speakers from around the country. These speakers are the lifeblood of this country, inspiring religious groups, corporations, clubs, convention centers, stadiums and classrooms. Open any page for inspiration!
Wartime Dissent in America tells the story of U.S. wartime dissent by exploring the speeches, pamphlets and essays of war opponents in every major American war since the Revolutionary War. This history and anthology summarizes each war, with special emphasis on the jeopardy and impact of dissent during each period. Far more than an anthology, the book explores the history and development of American wartime dissent. It is, at once, a valuable collection of the nation’s vital statements of wartime dissent, while also telling the broader story in which this tradition of dissent developed and played out. Robert Mann illuminates the constitutional and moral philosophies used to oppose war over more than two centuries.
For millennia, woman have been without a strong leadership voice in human affairs. No more! Women are now in positions of power in every branch of government, business, and social organization. They are providing a new style of collaborative and visionary leadership, which is changing the way society functions.
Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change is an anthology that celebrates these values. It includes chapters by women leaders in diverse fields of human endeavor. These range from entertainment (Oprah Winfrey), business finance (Suze Orman), government (First Lady, Michelle Obama), sports (Venus and Serena Williams), social change and philanthropy (Angelina Jolie), and literature (Sue Monk Kidd).
In over forty inspiring chapters, Goddess Shift describes the shape of the new human family that is emerging from the leadership of these remarkable women, and the very different future they envision for the world we share.
For Maggie Lamond Simone, sarcasm was always a means of survival and words her weapon of choice. Her second-grade teacher worried about a child so flippant at such a tender age. Twenty years later, as a police officer escorted a drunken Simone away from the car she had just wrecked, she asked him to drop her not at home but at the bar where her friends waited. He didn’t laugh and she quit drinking the next day. When she finally came up for air a few years later, she was afraid that she wouldn’t be funny without the alcohol, but had a startling revelation: she wasn’t funny in the first place—the world was. So she started writing about it. This collection of her columns and essays addresses dating, marriage, pregnancy, motherhood and menopause with a caustic wit and a healthy disrespect for perfection.
