ISSI Books

20 Questions & Answers on Black Europe

Stephen Small
2017

By Stephen Small - Europe is made up of at least 46 nations, and a population of more than 770 million people. Black people of African descent are estimated at more than 7 million, with at least 90% of them in just 12 nations. Stephen Small offers an in-depth analysis of what exactly is Black Europe, and what are the experiences of Black people in Europe. He defines Black Europe and addresses questions about gender and demography; about history and the legacies of slavery, colonialism and imperialism; the politics of racism, political representation and community...

Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas

Tianna Paschel
2016

Tianna Paschel - Through a collection of theoretically engaging and empirically grounded texts, this book examines African-descended populations in Latin America and Afro-Latin@s in the United States in order to explore questions of black identity and representation, transnationalism, and diaspora in the Americas.

The Master Plan ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory

Brian Fishman
2016

Brian Fishman - Given how quickly its operations have achieved global impact, it may seem that the Islamic State materialized suddenly. In fact, al-Qaeda’s operations chief, Sayf al-Adl, devised a seven-stage plan for jihadis to conquer the world by 2020 that included reestablishing the Caliphate in Syria between 2013 and 2016. Despite a massive schism between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, al-Adl’s plan has proved remarkably prescient. In summer 2014, ISIS declared itself the Caliphate after capturing Mosul, Iraq—part of stage five in al-Adl’s plan. Drawing on...

addicted.pregnant.poor

Kelly Ray Knight
2015

Kelly Ray Knight - For the addicted, pregnant, and poor women living in daily-rent hotels in San Francisco's Mission district, life is marked by battles against drug cravings, housing debt, and potential violence. In this stunning ethnography Kelly Ray Knight presents these women in all their complex humanity and asks what kinds of futures are possible for them given their seemingly hopeless situation. During her four years of fieldwork Knight documented women’s struggles as they traveled from the street to the clinic, jail, and family court, and back to the hotels....

Japanese American Millennials: Rethinking Generation, Community, and Diversity

Michael Omi
Dana Y. Nakano
Jeffrey T. Yamashita
2019

By Michael Omi - Whereas most scholarship on Japanese Americans looks at historical case studies or the 1.5 generation assimilating, this pioneering anthology, Japanese American Millennials, captures the experiences, perspectives, and aspirations of Asian Americans born between 1980 and 2000. The editors and contributors present multiple perspectives on who Japanese Americans are, how they think about notions of community and culture, and how they engage and negotiate multiple social identities.

The essays by...

The College Dropout Scandal

David Kirp
2019

By David Kirp - Higher education today faces a host of challenges, from quality to cost. But too little attention gets paid to a startling fact: four out of ten students -- that's more than ten percent of the entire population - -who start college drop out. The situation is particularly dire for black and Latino students, those from poor families, and those who are first in their families to attend college.

In The College Dropout Scandal, David Kirp outlines the scale of the problem and shows that it's fixable - -we already...

Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black Repair

Jovan Scott Lewis
2020

By Jovan Scott Lewis - Jovan Scott Lewis tells the story of three young and poor men striving to make a living in Montego Bay, where call centers and tourism are the two main industries in the struggling economy. Scammer’s Yard describes how these young men, seeking to overcome inequality and achieve autonomy, come to view crime as a form of liberation.

Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism

Lawrence Rosenthal
2020

By Lawrence Rosenthal - Since Trump's victory and the UK's Brexit vote, much of the commentary on the populist epidemic has focused on the emergence of populism. But, Lawrence Rosenthal argues, what is happening globally is not the emergence but the transformation of right-wing populism.

Rosenthal, the founder of UC Berkeley's Center for Right-Wing Studies, suggests right-wing populism is a protean force whose prime mover is the resentment felt toward perceived cultural elites, and whose abiding feature is its ideological flexibility, which now takes the form of...

Neo-nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education

John Aubrey Douglass
2021

By John Aubrey Douglass - Universities have long been at the forefront of both national development and global integration. But the political and policy world in which they operate is undergoing a transition, one that is reflective of a significant change in domestic politics and international relations: a populist turn inward among a key group of nation-states often led by demagogues that includes China and Hong Kong, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In many parts of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for...

Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa

Jovan Scott Lewis
2022

By Jovan Scott Lewis - Jovan Scott Lewis retells the history and afterlife of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, from the post-Reconstruction migration of Black people to Oklahoma Indian Territory to contemporary efforts to rebuild Black prosperity. He focuses on how the massacre in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood—colloquially known as Black Wall Street—curtailed the freedom built there. Rather than framing the massacre as a one-off event, Lewis places it in a larger historical and social context of widespread patterns of anti-Black racism, segregation, and dispossession...