With an eloquence and compassion reminiscent of James Baldwin's Letter to My Nephew, Ellis Cose presents a frank and realistic examination of the daunting challenges facing black men in twenty-first-century America and offers a way out of the cycle of defeatism and despair that wreaks havoc on America's black communities. Black men have never had more opportunity for success than they do today. Yet, as Ellis Cose bluntly puts it, "We are watching the largest group of black males in history stumbling through life with a ball and chain wrapped around their legs. If brought together in one incorporated region, the population of black males behind bars would instantly become the twelfth largest urban area in America." Add to that the ravages of AIDS, murder, poverty, and illiteracy, the raging anger between many black men and women, and the widening gap separating the black elite from the so-called underclass, and you have a prescription for a paralyzing pessimism. But even as he acknowledges the systemic obstacles that confront black men of all social strata, Ellis Cose refuses to accept them as reasons for giving up or giving in. In powerful and stirring prose, Cose rails against the historical worldview that has categorized academic achievement as a source of shame instead of pride in many black communities; he also outlines steps black males can take to enhance their odds for success. With insightful anecdotes about a broad range of black men -- from Franklin Raines, the first black man to run a Fortune 500 company, to unlettered ex-prisoners -- Cose documents the amazing journey the black race has made, and contemplates the challenges ahead. Both a warning of the vast social tragedy that is wasted black potential and a vital call to arms that can enable black men to reclaim their destiny, The Envy of the World is an honest and important book for anyone concerned about the future of America.

The key to overcoming covetousness and discontentment is to get to the root of our problem: mistrust of God's sovereignty and goodness. An ideal resource for deeper study and discussion.

After decades of banishment to popular magazines and advice columns, jealousy and envy have emerged as legitimate topics of scientific inquiry. This volume includes chapters from nearly every major contributor to the psychological literature in this area. From emotional, and cognitive processes that underlie jealousy and envy; to the ways these emotions are experienced and expressed within close relationships; to family, societal, and cultural contexts, the volume offers a definitive statement of current theory and research.

Self-envy is a new term that speaks to age-old therapeutic impasses. Dr. Rafael Lopez-Corvo, a prominent South American psychoanalyst, shows that the comprehension of self-envy is indispensable for the understanding of disorders of the self that are manifested in addictions, acting out, and inhibition of creativity. Although self-envy might at first appear to be a complicated concept to grasp, initial difficulties dissipate with the use of object relations theory, which provides us with a helpful instrument for examining the architecture of the internal world. From this perspective, we can understand behavior as influenced by the multiple interactions of early representations of self and other that operate in our inner selves. In this book, Dr. Lopez-Corvo identifies "child part self-objects," self representations from early development that remain split off from the self and harbor destructive and envious feelings toward the creative aspects of the self. Self-envy results from direct aggressive attacks by these childhood self-objects against the part of the self identified with a harmonious mother-father or parent-sibling relationship. These internal dynamics cause intense unconscious conflict, dissociation, and disturbances of the self, all of which underlie severe psychopathology, such as repetitive destructive behavior, and even the living of seemingly "normal" but constricted lives. Dr. Lopez-Corvo shows how with such patients, for whom one part of the self is ruthlessly pitted against another, interpretations should speak directly to the phenomenon of a war within the internal self.

How envy, spite, and the pursuit of admiration influence politics Why do governments underspend on policies that would make their constituents better off? Why do people participate in contentious politics when they could reap benefits if they were to abstain? In Envy in Politics, Gwyneth McClendon contends that if we want to understand these and other forms of puzzling political behavior, we should pay attention to envy, spite, and the pursuit of admiration--all manifestations of our desire to maintain or enhance our status within groups. Drawing together insights from political philosophy, behavioral economics, psychology, and anthropology, McClendon explores how and under what conditions status motivations influence politics. Through surveys, case studies, interviews, and an experiment, McClendon argues that when concerns about in-group status are unmanaged by social conventions or are explicitly primed by elites, status motivations can become drivers of public opinion and political participation. McClendon focuses on the United States and South Africa—two countries that provide tough tests for her arguments while also demonstrating that the arguments apply in different contexts. From debates over redistribution to the mobilization of collective action, Envy in Politics presents the first theoretical and empirical investigation of the connection between status motivations and political behavior.

A man and a woman tread the lines of danger, desire, and deliverance in this novel of the Fallen Angels—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. As the son of a serial killer, homicide detective Thomas “Veck” DelVecchio, Jr., grew up in the shadow of evil. Now, on the knife-edge between civic duty and blind retribution, he atones for the sins of his father—while fighting his inner demons. Assigned to monitor Veck is Internal Affairs officer Sophia Reilly, whose interest in him is both professional and arousingly personal. And Veck and Sophia have another link: Jim Heron, a mysterious stranger with too many answers to questions that are deadly. When Veck and Sophia are drawn into the ultimate battle between good and evil, their fallen angel savior is the only thing that stands between them and eternal damnation.

An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of Books), with a new afterword that revisits these stories—and North Korea more broadly—in 2022, in the wake of the pandemic NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them. Praise for Nothing to Envy “Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author’s deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details.”—The New York Times “Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail.”—The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force of meticulous reporting.”—The New York Review of Books “Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy. . . . Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.”—John Delury, Slate “At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer