"I read My Body Politic with admiration, sometimes for the pain that all but wept on the page, again for sheer exuberant friendships, for self-discovery, political imagination, and pluck. . . . Wonderful! In a dark time, a gift of hope. -Daniel Berrigan, S.J. "The struggles, joys, and political awakening of a firecracker of a narrator. . . . Linton has succeeded in creating a life both rich and enviable. With her crackle, irreverence, and intelligence, it's clear that the author would never be willing to settle. . . . Wholly enjoyable." -Kirkus Reviews "Linton is a passionate guide to a world many outsiders, and even insiders, find difficult to navigate. . . . In this volume, she recounts her personal odyssey, from flower child . . . to disability-rights/human rights activist." -Publishers Weekly "Witty, original, and political without being politically correct, introducing us to a cast of funny, brave, remarkable characters (including the professional dancer with one leg) who have changed the way that 'walkies' understand disability. By the time Linton tells you about the first time she was dancing in her wheelchair, you will feel like dancing, too." ---Carol Tavris, author of Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion "This astonishing book has perfect pitch. It is filled with wit and passion. Linton shows us how she learned to 'absorb disability,' and to pilot a new and interesting body. With verve and wonder, she discovers her body's pleasures, hungers, surprises, hurts, strengths, limits, and uses." -Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, author of Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature "An extraordinarily readable account of life in the fast lane... a brilliant autobiography and a great read." -Sander L. Gilman, author of Fat Boys: A Slim Book While hitchhiking from Boston to Washington, D.C., in 1971 to protest the war in Vietnam, Simi Linton was involved in a car accident that paralyzed her legs and took the lives of her young husband and her best friend. Her memoir begins with her struggle to regain physical and emotional strength and to resume her life in the world. Then Linton takes us on the road she traveled (with stops in Berkeley, Paris, Havana) and back to her home in Manhattan, as she learns what it means to be a disabled person in America. Linton eventually completed a Ph.D., remarried, and began teaching at Hunter College. Along the way she became deeply committed to the disability rights movement and to the people she joined forces with. The stories in My Body Politic are populated with richly drawn portraits of Linton's disabled comrades, people of conviction and lusty exuberance who dance, play-and organize--with passion and commitment. My Body Politic begins in the midst of the turmoil over Vietnam and concludes with a meditation on the U.S. involvement in the current war in Iraq and the war's wounded veterans. While a memoir of the author's gradual political awakening, My Body Politic is filled with adventure, celebration, and rock and roll-Salvador Dali, James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix all make cameo appearances. Linton weaves a tale that shows disability to be an ordinary part of the twists and turns of life and, simultaneously, a unique vantage point on the world.

In the bestselling tradition of The Interestings and A Little Life, this “cleverly constructed and emotionally compelling” (Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation) novel follows four longtime friends as they navigate love, commitment, and forgiveness while the world around them changes beyond recognition—from the author of the “savvy, heartfelt, and utterly engaging” (Alice McDermott) Bed-Stuy Is Burning. New York City is still regaining its balance in the years following September 11, when four twenty-somethings—Tess, Tazio, David, and Angelica—meet in a bar, each yearning for something: connection, recognition, a place in the world, a cause to believe in. Nearly fifteen years later, as their city recalibrates in the wake of the 2016 election, their bond has endured—but almost everything else has changed. As freshmen at Cooper Union, Tess and Tazio were the ambitious, talented future of the art world—but by thirty-six, Tess is married to David, the mother of two young boys, and working as an understudy on Broadway. Kind and steady, David is everything Tess lacked in her own childhood—but a recent freak accident has left him with befuddling symptoms, and she’s still adjusting to her new role as caretaker. Meanwhile, Tazio—who once had a knack for earning the kind of attention that Cooper Union students long for—has left the art world for a career in creative branding and politics. But in December 2016, fresh off the astonishing loss of his candidate, Tazio is adrift, and not even his gorgeous and accomplished fiancée, Angelica, seems able to get through to him. With tensions rising on the national stage, the four friends are forced to face the reality of their shared histories, especially a long-ago betrayal that has shaped every aspect of their friendship. Elegant and perceptive, “The Body Politic is a book about many things—what it means to be unwell, what it means to heal, how deep and strange friendships can be, and how hidden things never stay hidden for long” (Rachel Monroe, author of Savage Appetites).

Christine de Pizan was born in Venice and raised in Paris at the court of Charles V of France. Widowed at the age of twenty-five, she turned to writing as a source of comfort and income, and went on to produce a remarkable series of books, including poetry, politics, chivalry, warfare, religion and philosophy. She is considered to be France's first female professional writer. This was the first translation into modern English of Christine de Pizan's major political work, The Book of the Body Politic. Written during the Hundred Years' War, it discusses the education and behaviour appropriate for princes, nobility and common people, so that all classes can understand their responsibilities towards society as a whole. A product of a time of civil unrest, The Book of the Body Politic offers a medieval political theory of interdependence and social responsibility from the perspective of an educated woman.

"Christine de Pizan's Body Politic (1406-1407) is the first political treatise to have been written not just by a woman, but by a woman capable of holding her own in a normally male domain. It advises not just the prince, as was traditional, but also nobles, knights, and the common people, promoting the ideals of interdependence and social responsibility. Rooted in the mind-set of medieval Christendom, it heralds the humanism of the Renaissance, highlighting classical culture and Roman civic virtues. The Body Politic resounds still today, urging the need for probity in public life and the importance of responsibilities as well as rights"--

This book rethinks the body in global politics and the particular roles bodies play in our international system, foregrounding processes and practices involved in the continually contested (re/dis)embodiment of both human bodies and collective bodies politic. Purnell provides a new, innovative, and detailed theory of bodily (re)making and un-making that shows how bodies are simultaneously (re)made and moved and (re)make and move other bodies and things. Presented in the form of reflective/reflexive and theoretically innovative essays, the book explores: bodies in general and their precarious, excessive, ontologically insecure, and emotional facets; the fleshing out of contemporary necro(body)politics; and the visual-emotional politics embodied through the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical analyses feed into contemporary IR debates on British and American politics and international relations and the Global War on Terror, while also speaking to broader and interdisciplinary, theoretical literature on bodies/embodiment, visual politics, biopolitics, necropolitics, and affect/emotion, and feelings.

In Body Politic, David Shields looks at contemporary America and its mythology through the lens of professional and college sports. The result is an unusually insightful and provocative book about an empire in denial. Shields relentlessly examines the way we tell our sports stories (both fictional and nonfictional), considers the kinds of athletes we choose as heroes, and delineates the lessons and values we glean from sports. He explores the intricate and telling relationships between players and coaches, black and white players, immigrant and native players, male and female players, players and broadcasters, players and fans, and players and advertisers. In the process, he shows us the stories we Americans tell ourselves about the kind of people we believe ourselves to be.

This work advances an original thesis that challenges the dominant schools of thought concerning the liberal tradition in the US.