The author recounts his years in Vietnam as a conscientious objector, serving as a teacher and a rescue worker for an organization that sent children with war injuries to the United States.

This important book challenges the idea that religious fundamentalism can adequately be understood as a paranoid, xenophobic faith. It demonstrates instead how it draws upon a long tradition of evangelical and millenialist scripture in its engagement with issues at the spiritual and ethical core of postmodernity in the United States. The author examines the varieties of fundamentalism as they appear in prophecy, sermon, film and fiction. In its wide-ranging consideration of the rhetoric of the New World Order, the literature of prophecy, Cold War films, television evangelism, cross-border texts, and post-nationalist writing, Fundamentalism in America provides a vital and compelling account of the present state of religious and nationality identity in the United States.

A Mother’s Face is a Childs’ First Heaven is the latest short story collection from Joe Wheeler. Joe curated 12 of the most well-known and engaging motherhood stories ever written, including the all-time classic short-story , The Littlest Orphan by Margaret Sangster. ….All too soon the electronic tentacles created by our society will woo our children away from us — but we can delay that separation by our willingness to spend time with our children while they are young. For our children do not spell love L-O-V-E, but rather, T-I-M-E. --From the introduction

The Distant Shores of Freedom analyses literary works in English written by Vietnamese refugees in the US. Fiction and memoirs by Vietnamese Americans recover stories and memories that are often different from mainstream American ones and that difference enables readers to think of the US war in Vietnam from perspectives that are missing in mainstream representations. Dwelling not only on the war and its aftermaths, Vietnamese American writings also ponder over the existential issues of exile; the idea of home; the pain of marginality and racism; the question of community formation within the US; and the complexity of diasporic lives. Subarno Chattarji raises critical questions such as who gets to speak and write, and to what ends and purposes? Who reads Vietnamese American writings and how can we account for these publications in the US over a period of time? What can and cannot be written or spoken? What is remembered and what is silenced? What traumas and memories are articulated? These questions point towards a larger context of diaspora studies as well as 'the rituals of cultural memory' that complicate our understanding of the Vietnam War and its aftermaths.

But these questions are asked again in the hope that they might lead to a better understanding of what My Lai means for us now.

The new millennium finds humanity situated at critical crossroads. While there are many hopeful signs of cross-cultural engagement and democratic dialogue, it is equally the case that the challenges of warfare and injustice continue to plague nations and communities around the globe. Against this backdrop, there exists a powerful mechanism for transforming crises into opportunities: the philosophy and practice of nonviolence. The expert authors brought together in this volume collectively deploy the essential teachings of nonviolence across a spectrum of contemporary issues. From considering the principles of the French Revolution and encouraging peace through natural resource management to exploring multiculturism and teaching peace in the elementary classroom, this work is broad in scope yet detailed in its approach to the fundamental principles of nonviolence.

Whether Thersites in Homer’s Iliad, Wilfred Owen in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” or Allen Ginsberg in “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” poets have long given solitary voice against the brutality of war. The hasty cancellation of the 2003 White House symposium “Poetry and the American Voice” in the face of protests by Sam Hamill and other invited guests against the coming “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq reminded us that poetry and poets still have the power to challenge the powerful. Behind the Lines investigates American war resistance poetry from the Second World War through the Iraq wars. Rather than simply chronicling the genre, Philip Metres argues that this poetry gets to the heart of who is authorized to speak about war and how it can be represented. As such, he explores a largely neglected area of scholarship: the poet’s relationship to dissenting political movements and the nation. In his elegant study, Metres examines the ways in which war resistance is registered not only in terms of its content but also at the level of the lyric. He proposes that protest poetry constitutes a subgenre that—by virtue of its preoccupation with politics, history, and trauma—probes the limits of American lyric poetry. Thus, war resistance poetry—and the role of what Shelley calls unacknowledged legislators—is a crucial, though largely unexamined, body of writing that stands at the center of dissident political movements.