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Mother Jones is an award-winning national magazine widely respected for its groundbreaking investigative reporting and coverage of sustainability and environmental issues.
Life is all about second chances, and Jane Whitley has just received an inheritance that is going to challenge her in more ways than she could ever have imagined.
"The Mafia? What is the Mafia? Something you eat? Something you drink? I don't know the Mafia. I've never seen it." Mafiosi have often reacted this way to questions from journalists and law enforcement. Social scientists who study the Mafia usually try to pin down what it "really is," thus fusing their work with their object. In Mafiacraft, Deborah Puccio-Den undertakes a new form of ethnographic inquiry that focuses not on answering "What is the Mafia?" but on the ontological, moral, and political effects of posing the question itself. Her starting point is that Mafia is not a readily nameable social fact but a problem of thought produced by the absence of words. Puccio-Den approaches covert activities using a model of "Mafiacraft," which inverts the logic of witchcraft. If witchcraft revolves on the lethal power of speech, Mafiacraft depends on the deadly strength of silence. How do we write an ethnography of phenomena that cannot be named? Puccio-Den approaches this task with a fascinating anthropology of silence, breaking new ground for the study of the world’s most famous criminal organization.
The past two decades have witnessed increasing opposition to mafia influence and activities in Italy. Community organizations such as Libera, founded in 1995, and Addiopizzo, originating in 2004, exemplify how Italian society has tried to come together to promote antimafia activities. The societal opposition to mafia influence continues to grow and the Internet has become a frontline in the battle between the two groups. The Italian Antimafia, New Media, and the Culture of Legality is the first book to examine the online battles between the mafia and its growing cohort of opponents. While the mafia's supporters have used Internet technologies to expand its power, profits, and violence, antimafia citizens employ the same technologies to recreate Italian civil society. The contributors to this volume are experts in diverse fields and offer interdisciplinary studies of antimafia activism and legality in online journalism, Twitter, YouTube, digital storytelling, blogs, music, and photography. These examinations enable readers to understand the grassroots Italian cultural revolution, which makes individuals responsible for promoting justice, freedom, and dignity.
Some people seek out connections. Jack Contino does it for a living. A cop knows how to link people and events. Maria Falcone connects people and places: the city of Boston, a rural New Hampshire college town, a Boston hit man, a college professor . . . Jack Contino is a veteran cop with the Metropolitan District Commission Police Department. He often works with the FBI; a gangland massacre puts him in pursuit of a killer, but the trail takes an unexpected turn. Maria connects by leading a double life: college coed during the week; high priced call girl on weekends. A professor loves her. A mobster uses her. Her future depends on one of them. Ben Secani learned to kill for his country in Vietnam and finds opportunity in the Boston Mob. The action puts these people on a collision course, and the result changes their lives forever.
This volume focuses on women whose lives are entangled in the workings of the Mafia, drawing on courtroom testimonies, interviews, contemporary journalism and recent research. Individual narratives illuminate women's experiences, both as victims or active opponents.
Grassroots memorials have become major areas of focus during times of trauma, danger, and social unrest. These improvised memorial assemblages continue to display new and more dynamic ways of representing collective and individual identities and in doing so reveal the steps that shape the national memories of those who struggle to come to terms with traumatic loss. This volume focuses on the hybrid quality of these temporary memorials as both monuments of mourning and as focal points for protest and expression of discontent. The broad range of case studies in this volume include anti-mafia shrines, Theo van Gogh’s memorial, September 11th memorials, March 11th shrines in Madrid, and Carlo Giuliani memorials in Genoa.
Reviews originally appeared in the Chicago sun-times.
Swan Song for a Singer: A Demetria Crawford Mystery is the third exciting novel in a series. Demetria Crawford and her Yorkshire Terrier named Poochini return to New York City from London to resume her singing career. Tria is a crippled opera singer and amateur detective, who is lovely, intelligent, and curious. Her Yorkie is her devoted protector. Her friends, Charles, Maggie, and David, who previously joined in Tria's adventures in A Muted Melody and The Missing Maestro, are always ready to help her in any way they can. They added two young British orphans to their New York journey. The children had been severely abused, and Tria has vowed to educate them and find them a safe place to live...