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| AFRICA, AFRICA! : Fifteen Stories [Frederic Hunter] A collection of stories that depict Westerners encountering Africa -- its people, its mysteries, its beauty and bafflements. Often those encounters change the Westerners, leading some to wisdom, others to heartache. The stories take the reader from the heart of the Congo to modern Madagascar, from a village in Nairobi to the mountain-top palace of the Mwami of Kabare, from a train in South Africa to a dinner party in Ouagadougou. Journalists, diplomats, and teachers experience the problems and fascinations of life in Africa. { 263pp, 150x210mm, January 2000; PB, £7.99, 1885942184:9781885942180 / HB, £11.99, 1885942176:9781885942173 , Cune Press } |
| AN EAR TO THE GROUND : Presenting Writers From 2 Coasts [Scott C Davis (ed)] Personal essays on the theme "local truth". Piquant, surprising, unpredictable prose from 75 of the finest emerging writers of the East and West Coasts. These men and women speak to particular subcultures and localities. Their words have sharp edges. Their thinking is strong, deeply felt, rooted-a welcome change from the pabulum that is produced for a mass audience. Learn of our future as is passes from the heat and passion of local discourse into national debate. Listen to men and women who, for all their individuality, share Cune's notion that literature, by its excellence as art tends to orient, heal, and uplift. { 488pp, 150x210mm, August 1997; PB, £12.50, 1885942567:9781885942562 , Cune Press } |
| BEST REVENGE : How the Theater Saved My Life (and Has Been Killing Me Ever Since) [Stephen Fife] A middle-aged playwright -- in conflict with his ex-wife, his current girlfriend, and a legion of creditors -- journeys from Hollywood to Atlanta to work with his youthful idol, legendary avant-garde director Joseph Chaikin. Thus begins a roller coaster ride of a very unusual sort, combining personal revelations with theatrical obsessions, a step-by-step disclosure of a master director's rehearsal process with a search for spiritual truth (and a decent night's sleep). Just hop aboard and get a backstage pass to the 'holding-on-by-your-fingernails' reality of the contemporary American theatre. { 238pp, 155x230mm, March 2004; PB, £10.99, 1885942249:9781885942241 , Cune Press } |
| GLOW IN THE DARK [Lisa Teasley] This startlingly edgy, seductive debut collection of short stores, travels from New York to Northern California, Mexico, Los Angeles and Paris, dropping us dead centre into the lives of those whose extreme behaviour has led them to the threshold of significant transition. Among the many intriguing, unique individuals, there is Marty wrestling with sobriety and his unspeakable obsession; Gita trying to conduct the love triangle she orchestrated; the frustrated lover, Tim, attempting to wedge himself between his girlfriend and her brother; and the surf chick, Magda, tightrope-walking in her circus of drugs, opportunistic men and the waves of Baja California. Finely crafted and painstakingly written, each of these twelve stories is a stunningly powerful, dynamic look into lives at the breaking point. { 187pp, 145x195mm, January 2000; HB, £7.99, 1885942192:9781885942197 , Cune Press } |
| KISSES FROM A DISTANCE : An Immigrant Family Experience [Raff Ellis] This book chronicles a Lebanese immigrant experience -- based on a cache of more than 200 letters discovered after the death of the author's mother. The tale begins with the kidnapping of the author's grandmother from a remote convent in 1895. It chronicles her subsequent unhappy marriage and her husband's tragic attempt to find success in America. Their particular story plays out against the struggle and suffering of the Lebanese people through years of oppressive Ottoman rule and the ravages of World War I. Employing traditional Lebanese proverbs and folk tales, "Kisses from a Distance" weaves the author's extensive research and visits to Lebanon into a compelling narrative. { 312pp, 155x230mm, September 2007; PB, £15.50, 188594246X:9781885942463 , Cune Press } |
| NUMBER PHONICS : A Complete Learn-by-Numbers Reading Program for Easy One-on-One Tutoring of Children [Karen Louise Davidson] This is a revolutionary phonics system for teaching children to read. It will also be effective in teaching reading to illiterate or semi-literate adults. The author is a reading expert who home-schooled her own seven children. She used every available phonics system, and found them all wanting. She realised that 30% of children are left behind by traditional phonics systems. She found that children are quick to use number clues to identify the different sounds of each letter. By tagging the letters with a number, she prompts the student to recall the specific sound of this letter. And she applies this system to all the 84 major sounds in English. Who should use Number Phonics? Home-schoolers. Parents who want to give their children a jump start. Parents whose children are struggling. Classroom teachers and reading specialists. { 336pp, 215x280mm, January 2005; PB, £18.50, 1885942230:9781885942234 / HB, £34.50, 1885942214:9781885942210 , Cune Press } |
| PEN OF DAMASCUS STEEL : Political Cartoons of an Arab Master [Ali Farzat] Ali Farzat is the dean of Arab political cartoonists. His caricatures do not spare wealth, influence, or power. They give hope to the disenfranchised, the poor, and the hungry. Farzat is an authentic Arab voice who nevertheless does not hesitate to buck the tide of majority opinion. (He has consistently disparaged Saddam Hussein, for example, and lauds the US for adopting his position that Saddam must go.) Farzat's work is a ringing cry for justice that cuts across all cultures. Coming soon: a website with samples of Farzat's work. { 240pp, 205x205mm, November 2004; PB, £10.99, 1885942397:9781885942395 / HB, £21.50, 1885942389:9781885942388 , Cune Press } |
| ROAD FROM DAMASCUS : An American Travelling Alone Meets Smugglers, Mystics, Revolutionaries, Bedouins, Wise Men, Secret Police -- & Other Ordinary Syrians [Scott C Davis] In February 2001 Scott C. Davis flew to Damascus, attended raucous political salons, talked all night, and sat in local cafés debating the nature of the evolving Syrian nation. Such openness was new in Syria. Was it a sign of things to come? Would the Damascene Curtain fall as heavily and permanently as did the Berlin Wall? Would Damascus become another tourist trap bursting with American franchise restaurants, another Amman? To answer these questions, and to give a feel for the real country beneath the rapidly changing surfaces, Davis tells a story of an earlier time when Syrians did not discuss politics for fear of the 'mukhabarat' and when some hesitated, in their own homes, even to mention the name of the Syrian president. Fourteen years earlier, in October 1987, Davis had come to Damascus and begun a slow, difficult journey through Syrian society. He met artists and intellectuals, wealthy landowners, retired mystics, and also slept on the floor beside humble peasants and working folk. The times were quiet, jobs scarce, and ordinary folk could take a few moments for tea with a guest. Many of those Davis met took pride in their own simplicity. Denied political power and wealth, they aspired instead to wisdom -- or at least to perfecting a sardonic wit. This tale of grace, humour, and humanity turns on the author's search for truth and, also, for a few good quotes for his book -- a search that took him across Syria in the footsteps of Alexander to the ancient Roman Bridge over the Tigris River in the far eastern tip of the country -- and then brought him racing back to Damascus to find the Patriarch of Antioch. { 368pp, 155x230mm, February 2002; HB, £18.50, 1885942842:9781885942845 / PB, £10.99, 1885942532:9781885942531 , Cune Press } |
| SEARCHING JENIN : Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion 2002 [Ramzy Baroud (ed)] A searing testament to Israeli brutality and Palestinian resilience, spirit, and grace under pressure. Why is it that the US, Israel, the UN, and every news organisation on earth has expressed their views on the Jenin invasion yet the Palestinian victims have never been allowed to speak? Searching Jenin explains what happened and how it affected the residents. It includes forty-two testimonies of Jenin survivors gathered by Palestinian journalists. Preface by Noam Chomsky. Introduction by Palestinian-American journalist Ramzy Baroud. Testimonies by international observers. Timeline of events. List of 'known dead'. 38 photos by Palestinian photographer Mahfouz Abu Turk. Calligraphy by Mamoun Sakkal. One testimony is that of 9-year-old Rund al-Shalabi who complains that the Israeli soldiers smashed her toys. Also, it develops, they shot and killed her father. Another testimony is that of the Red Crescent ambulance driver Ihab Ayadi who tells how Israeli soldiers held him at gun point to prevent him from rescuing gunshot victims until they had a chance to bleed to death. Um Muhammad is a mother who was hiding in her basement with the rest of her family when the Israeli soldiers ordered them out, separated the men and took them away to an unknown location. The soldiers swept through the house, throwing all the belongings out the upper windows as sport. They found the family's life savings in a cloth bag hidden in the bedroom and stole the money. After eleven days they forced the women to walk to another section where they took shelter in a vacant house. When they returned, the top floor was completely burned out. SEARCHING JENIN includes testimony that has never before appeared in the international or even in the Palestinian media. { 288pp, 165x230mm, February 2003; HB, £15.50, 1885942338:9781885942333 / PB, £10.99, 1885942346:9781885942340 , Cune Press } |
| SOLDIER, THE BUILDER & THE DIPLOMAT : Custer, the Titanic & World War One [Steven Schlesser] Contemporary readers, who wonder at the British and American knack for misguided adventure, will enjoy these three essays on Custer, the Titanic, and the onset of World War I. The book consists of rapier-like literary thrusts into the lives of General George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Andrews (the builder of the Titanic), and Edward Grey (British Foreign Secretary before World War I). However spectacular their failures, it's generally agreed that these men (or, in the case of Edward Grey, the men around them) could have avoided disaster except for arrogance -- a flaw that has long characterised the imperial ambition of leaders from both countries. One shudders to think where such a mentality will take us in a nuclear age. Schlesser's readable study is more than entertainment or scholarship, it is a plea for balance, probity, and reason in an era when a single fit of arrogance by a world leader can devastate hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings and imperil the very project of civilised human existence on this planet. It's difficult to overstate the importance of this unassuming book. Essays on the problem of pride and avoidable failure. { 192pp, 155x230mm, January 2006; HB, £18.50, 1885942079:9781885942074 / PB, £10.99, 1885942060:9781885942067 , Cune Press } |
| STEEL & SILK : Men & Women who Shaped Syria, 1900-2000 [Sami Moubayed] Consists of profiles of 341 men and women. Syria has led the Arab World in many ways for the past 100 years. It was the headquarters of the Arab nationalist movement in the 1910s and leader of women's emancipation in the 1920s. It was among the first Arab countries to achieve independence from colonial rule in 1946, and among the region's earliest and healthiest democracies in the 1950s. From this point on, Syria produced an array of leading poets, writers, and painters. In the 1970s, Syria was the first Arab country to appoint women as judges, parliamentary deputies, ministers, and ambassadors. Meet the nationalists who led the independence struggle in Syria. Meet the politicians who manuvered its politics into becoming a central power-broker in the Middle East. Meet the poets, the painters and thinkers as well as the diplomats, journalists, and civil servants. Meet the women and men who shaped 20th century Syria. Includes a workshop for journalists and researchers that includes an annotated timeline of 20th Century Syria, facts on Syria, and brief bios of the current leadership. { 623pp, 155x230mm, October 2005; HB, £24.50, 1885942400:9781885942401 / PB, £15.50, 1885942419:9781885942418 , Cune Press } |
| WORLD OF PATIENCE GROMES : Making & Unmaking a Black Community [Scott C Davis] In 1970, Patience Gromes was an 83 year old widow who lived on State Street in Fulton, one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Richmond, Virginia. This non-fiction narrative traces the life of Patience Gromes, her family, her neighbours from the War between the States to the War on Poverty. Meet Patience's grandfather who escaped slavery 14 years before the Civil War. Experience the hard years of Reconstruction, the cruelty of De Jure Segregation, the triumph of Civil Rights. Probe the complexities and ironies of neighbourhood life under urban renewal and the War on Poverty. { 288pp, 150x210mm, January 1989; PB, £8.50, 1885942516:9781885942517 , Cune Press } |