The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas PDF Download

Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393239500
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Describes how a Bangladeshi immigrant, shot in the Dallas mini mart where he worked in the days after September 11 in a revenge crime, forgave his assailant and petitioned the state of Texas to spare his attacker the death penalty.

Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458763099
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Reversing his parents immigrant path, a young writer returns to India and discovers an old country making itself new. Anand Giridharadas sensed something was afoot as his plane prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, Were all trying to go that way, pointing to the rear. You, youre going this way. Giridharadas was...

Author: Anand Giridhardas
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393350797
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The True American tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two more victims, at other gas stations, die instantly. The True American traces the making of these two men, Stroman and Bhuiyan, and of their fateful encounter. It follows them as they rebuild shattered lives—one striving on death row to become a better man, the other to heal and pull himself up from the lowest rung on the ladder of an unfamiliar country. Ten years after the shooting, an Islamic pilgrimage seeds in Bhuiyan a strange idea: if he is ever to be whole, he must reenter Stroman’s life. He longs to confront Stroman and speak to him face to face about the attack that changed their lives. Bhuiyan publicly forgives Stroman, in the name of his religion and its notion of mercy. Then he wages a legal and public-relations campaign, against the state of Texas and Governor Rick Perry, to have his attacker spared from the death penalty. Ranging from Texas’s juvenile justice system to the swirling crowd of pilgrims at the Hajj in Mecca; from a biker bar to an immigrant mosque in Dallas; from young military cadets in Bangladesh to elite paratroopers in Israel; from a wealthy household of chicken importers in Karachi, Pakistan, to the sober residences of Brownwood, Texas, The True American is a rich, profoundly moving exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions. It helps us to consider our love-hate relationship with immigrants, the underpinnings of domestic terrorism, and how—or whether—we choose what we become.

Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039324413X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
"Gives you new eyes on your nation, makes you wonder about both the recent South Asian immigrant behind the counter at the food mart and the tattooed white man behind you in line. It reminds you that there are some Americas where mercy flows freely, and other Americas where it has turned to ice." —Eboo Patel, The Washington Post Days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into a Dallas minimart and shoots Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi immigrant, maiming and nearly killing him. Ten years after the shooting, Bhuiyan wages a campaign against the State of Texas to have his attacker spared from the death penalty. The True American is a rich, colorful, profoundly moving exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions. Winner of the NYPL Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR, and Publishers Weekly.

Author: Joshua Graves
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1630879592
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
The adherents of Islam and Christianity comprise half of the world's population, or 3.5 billion people. Tension between them exists throughout the world and is increasing here in North America. In How Not to Kill a Muslim, Dr. Joshua Graves provides a practical subversive theological framework for a strategic posture of peaceful engagement between Christians and Muslims. Based upon both academic and personal experience (Josh grew up in Metro Detroit), this book will provide progressive Christians with a clear understanding of Jesus' radical message of inclusivity and love. There is no one who is not a neighbor. There is no them. There's only us. Our future depends upon this becoming true in our cities, synagogues, churches, and mosques. In pluralistic societies such as those of Canada and the United States, the true test of Christianity is what it offers those who are not Christian. And it starts with Islam.

Author: John Bodnar
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469662620
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Americans responded to the deadly terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, with an outpouring of patriotism, though all were not united in their expression. A war-based patriotism inspired millions of Americans to wave the flag and support a brutal War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, while many other Americans demanded an empathic patriotism that would bear witness to the death and suffering surrounding the attack. Twenty years later, the war still simmers, and both forms of patriotism continue to shape historical understandings of 9/11's legacy and the political life of the nation. John Bodnar's compelling history shifts the focus on America's War on Terror from the battlefield to the arena of political and cultural conflict, revealing how fierce debates over the war are inseparable from debates about the meaning of patriotism itself. Bodnar probes how honor, brutality, trauma, and suffering have become highly contested in commemorations, congressional correspondence, films, soldier memoirs, and works of art. He concludes that Americans continue to be deeply divided over the War on Terror and how to define the terms of their allegiance--a fissure that has deepened as American politics has become dangerously polarized over the first two decades of this new century.

Author: Richard L. Abel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108691412
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 861

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Book Description
The US 'war on terror' has repeatedly violated fundamental rule of law values. When executive and legislature commit such egregious wrongs, courts represent the ultimate defense. Law's Trials: The Performance of Legal Institutions in the US 'War on Terror' offers the first comprehensive account of judicial performance during the sixteen years of the Bush and Obama administrations. Abel examines criminal prosecutions of alleged terrorists, courts martial of military personnel accused of law of war violations, military commission trials of 'high value detainees', habeas corpus petitions by Guantánamo detainees, civil damage actions by victims of both the 'war on terror' and terrorism, and civil liberties violations by government officials and Islamophobic campaigners. Law's Trials identifies successful defenses of the rule of law through qualitative and quantitative analyses, comparing the behavior of judges within and between each category of cases and locating those actions in a comparative history of efforts to redress fundamental injustices.

Author: Valarie Kaur
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0525509097
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
An urgent manifesto and a dramatic memoir of awakening, this is the story of revolutionary love. Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize • “In a world stricken with fear and turmoil, Valarie Kaur shows us how to summon our deepest wisdom.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love How do we love in a time of rage? How do we fix a broken world while not breaking ourselves? Valarie Kaur—renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer—describes revolutionary love as the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. Starting from that place of wonder, the world begins to change: It is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, even a nation. Kaur takes readers through her own riveting journey—as a brown girl growing up in California farmland finding her place in the world; as a young adult galvanized by the murders of Sikhs after 9/11; as a law student fighting injustices in American prisons and on Guantánamo Bay; as an activist working with communities recovering from xenophobic attacks; and as a woman trying to heal from her own experiences with police violence and sexual assault. Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists, Kaur reclaims love as an active, public, and revolutionary force that creates new possibilities for ourselves, our communities, and our world. See No Stranger helps us imagine new ways of being with each other—and with ourselves—so that together we can begin to build the world we want to see.

Author: Eboo Patel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691196966
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
A timely defense of religious diversity and its centrality to American identity America is the most religiously diverse nation on the planet. In today’s volatile climate of religious conflict and distrust, how do we affirm that the American promise is deeply intertwined with how each of us engages with people of different beliefs? Eboo Patel, former faith adviser to Barack Obama, provides answers to this timely question. In this thought-provoking book, Patel draws on his personal experience as a Muslim in America to examine the importance of religious diversity in the nation’s cultural, political, and economic life. He explores how religious language has given the United States some of its most enduring symbols and inspired its most vital civic institutions—and demonstrates how the genius of the American experiment lies in its empowerment of all people.

Author: Allan C. Ornstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317377818
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Excellence vs Equality: Can Society Achieve Both Goals? explores the issues faced by societies attempting to preserve democratic ideals and the common good in an era of incommensurate wealth and opportunity. As differences in advantage and ability affect the relationships between institutions and the people who comprise them, the book argues that political and social compromise is needed to prevent economic inequality from threatening the well-being and mobility of the less able and less fortunate. Topics include globalization, technology, innovation, talent and meritocracy, higher education, big business, labor unions, and social justice within educational and workplace settings. The author raises perennial and ever-prescient questions regarding how to balance excellence and equality, and how to reduce inequality around the world.