Biografías, página 167 de 934

Dorothy Wright Nelson was a prominent federal judge on the level just below the U.S. Supreme Court for over 40 years. One of the early tenured female law professors and one of the rare female deans in the U.S. legal academy in the 1960s and 70s, her expertise was in reforming courts to makethem more just and accessible for all people. When she became a federal judge in 1980, she helped to make the federal courts more efficient and provide litigants with alternatives - including mediation and arbitration - to resolve cases without greater expense and delay. An ardent believer in morepeaceful resolution of conflicts, Judge Nelson educated judges around the world on conflict resolution and the rule of law, often while engaging quietly in human rights advocacy for persecuted Bahais around the globe. Her Bahai faith also inspired her judicial opinions providing more equality anddue process for the marginalized, including the poor, racial minorities, immigrants, mentally ill and the powerless. Dorothy and her husband, a state court judge, balanced their professional achievements with their personal commitments in a manner unusual for their time. They devoted considerableenergy to raising their two children, spending time with their extended family, and engaging in Bahai activities (including world travel, youth camps, weekly Sunday School and firesides in their home). This book captures the life story of an extraordinary female leader and trailblazer in a highlytraditional, male-dominated profession, unafraid to challenge the status quo in her pleasant, optimistic, determined and collegial manner.

Under the Soviet regime, millions of zeks (prisoners) were incarcerated in the forced labor camps, the Gulag. There many died of starvation, disease, and exhaustion, and some were killed by criminals and camp guards. In 1939, as the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland, many Polish citizens found themselves swept up by the Soviet occupation and sent into the Gulag. One such victim was Julius Margolin, a Pinsk-born Jewish philosopher and writer living in Palestine who was in Poland on family matters. Margolins Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back offers a powerful, first-person account of one of the most shocking chapters of the violent twentieth century. Opening with the outbreak of World War II in Poland, Margolin relates its devastating impact on the Jews and his arrest and imprisonment in the Gulag system. During his incarceration from 1940 to 1945, he nearly died from starvation and overwork but was able to return to Western Europe and rejoin his family in Palestine. With a philosophers astute analysis of man and society, as well as with humor, his memoir of flight, entrapment, and survival details the choices and dilemmas faced by an individual under extreme duress. Margolins moving account illuminates universal issues of human rights under a totalitarian regime and ultimately the triumph of human dignity and decency. This translation by Stefani Hoffman is the first English-language edition of this classic work, originally written in Russian in 1947 and published in an abridged French version in 1949. Circulated in a Russian samizdat version in the USSR, it exerted considerable influence on the formation of the genre of Gulag memoirs and was eagerly read by Soviet dissidents. Timothy Snyders foreword and Katherine Jollucks introduction contextualize the creation of this remarkable account of a Jewish world ravaged in the Stalinist empire--and the life of the man who was determined to reveal the horrors of the gulag camps and the plight of the zeks to the world.

In 2005, hurricane Katrina and its aftermath starkly revealed the continued racial polarization of America. Disproportionately impacted by the ravages of the storm, displaced black victims were often characterized by the media as refugees. The characterization was wrong-headed, and yet deeply revealing. Sanctuary: African Americans and Empire traces the long history of this and related terms, like alien and foreign, a rhetorical shorthand that has shortchanged black America for over 250 years. In tracing the language and politics that have informed debates about African American citizenship, Sanctuary in effect illustrates the historical paradox of African American subjecthood: while frequently the target of legislation (slave law, the Black Codes, and Jim Crow), blacks seldom benefited from the actions of the state. Blackness helped to define social, cultural, and legal aspects of American citizenship in a manner that excluded black people themselves. They have been treated, rather, as foreigners in their home country. African American civil rights efforts worked to change this. Activists and intellectuals demanded equality, but they were often fighting for something even more fundamental: the recognition that blacks were in fact human beings. As citizenship forced acknowledgement of the humanity of African Americans, it thus became a gateway to both civil and human rights. Waligora-Davis shows how artists like Langston Hughes underscored the power of language to define political realities, how critics like W.E.B. Du Bois imagined democratic political strategies, and how they and other public figures have used their writing as a forum to challenge the bankruptcy of a social economy in which the value of human life is predicated on race and civil identity.

Magdolna Hargittai uses over fifteen years of in-depth conversation with female physicists, chemists, biomedical researchers, and other scientists to form cohesive ideas on the state of the modern female scientist. The compilation, based on sixty conversations, examines unique challenges that women with serious scientific aspirations face. In addition to addressing challenges and the unjustifiable underrepresentation of women at the higher levels of academia, Hargittai takes a balanced approach by discussing how some of the most successful of these women have managed to obtain professional success and personal happiness.Women Scientists portrays scientists from different backgrounds, different geographical regions-eighteen countries from four continents-and leaders from a variety of professional backgrounds, including eight Nobel laureate women. The book is divided into three sections: Husband and Wife Teams, Women at the Top, and In High Positions. Hargittai uses her own experience to introduce her first section on the lives of prominent scientific couples and addresses the joys and disadvantages of husband and wife teams. The second section is a comprehensive exploration of the struggles and triumphs of women at the top. Hargittai introduces women from countries where relatively little has been written about female scientists. The final section focuses on women scientists involved with science administration and leadership. Hargittais biographical sketches role models for budding scientists. The book is a much needed account of female presence and influence in the sciences.

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Philosophers and poets in times past tried to figure out why the stainless moon smoothly polished, like a diamond in Dantes words, had stains. The agreed solution was that, like a mirror, it reflected the imperfect Earth. Today we smile, but it was a clever way to understand the Moon in amanner that was consistent with the beliefs of their age. The Moon is no longer the in thing. We see it as often as the Sun and give it little thought -- weve become indifferent. However, the Moon does reflect more than just sunlight. The Moon, or more precisely the nomenclature of lunar craters, still holds up a mirror to an important aspect of human history. Of the 1586 craters that have been named honoring philosophers and scientists, only 28 honor a woman. These 28 women of the Moon present us with an opportunity to meditate on this gap, but perhaps more significantly, they offer us anopportunity to talk about their lives, mostly unknown today.

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In the city of Puebla there lived an American who made himself into the richest man in Mexico. Driven by a steely desire to prove himself-first to his wifes family, then to Mexican elites-William O. Jenkins rose from humble origins in Tennessee to build a business empire in a country energized by industrialization and revolutionary change. In Jenkins of Mexico, Andrew Paxman presents the first biography of this larger-than-life personality. When the decade-long Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910, Jenkins preyed on patrician property owners and bought up substantial real estate. He suffered a scare with a firing squad and then a kidnapping by rebels, an episode that almost triggered a US invasion. After the war he owned textile mills, developed Mexicos most productive sugar plantation, and helped finance the rise of a major political family, the �vila Camachos. During the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s-50s, he lorded over the film industry with his movie theater monopoly and key role in production. By means of Mexicos first major hostile takeover, he bought the countrys second-largest bank. Reputed as an exploiter of workers, a puppet-master of politicians, and Mexicos wealthiest industrialist, Jenkins was the gringo that Mexicans loved to loathe. After his wifes death, he embraced philanthropy and willed his entire fortune to a foundation named for her, which co-founded two prestigious universities and funded projects to improve the lives of the poor in his adopted country. Using interviews with Jenkins descendants, family papers, and archives in Puebla, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Washington, Jenkins of Mexico tells a contradictory tale of entrepreneurship and monopoly, fearless individualism and cozy deals with power-brokers, embrace of US-style capitalism and political anti-Americanism, and Mexicos transformation from semi-feudal society to emerging economic power.

What was Albert Einstein like as a person? How did J. Robert Oppenheimers religious background impact his scientific endeavors? Why did John Stewart Bell get into physics in the first place? Prolific science writer Jeremy Bernstein has followed up on his original Quantum Profiles, published in 1990, with seven added profiles: Wendell Furry, Philipp Frank, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Victor Weisskopf, Tom Lehrer, Max Jammer, and Robert Serber. The profiles on John Stewart Bell, John Wheeler, and Albert Einstein from the first edition have been revised and expanded, as well. Bernstein presents each profile carefully, and the context provided in these historical profiles is revolutionary in each approach. Bernsteins unique academic and social background allows readers to fully grasp the character profiles in each chapter. With a conversational writing style, Bernstein lets readers get to know these ten prolific physicists-from personalities to historical and scientific significance-in a whole new way.

This is the inside story of Elizabeth Is inner circle and the crucial human relationships which lay at the heart of her personal and political life. Using a wide range of original sources--including private letters, portraits, verse, drama, and state papers--Susan Doran provides a vivid andoften dramatic account of political life in Elizabethan England and the queen at its center, offering a deeper insight into Elizabeths emotional and political conduct--and challenging many of the popular myths that have grown up around her. It is a story replete with fascinating questions. What was the true nature of Elizabeths relationship with her father, Henry VIII, especially after his execution of her mother? What was the influence of her step-mothers on Elizabeths education and religious beliefs? How close was she really to herhalf-brother Edward VI--and were relations with her half-sister Mary really as poisonous as is popularly assumed? And what of her relationship with her Stewart cousins, most famously with Mary Queen of Scots, executed on Elizabeths orders in 1587, but also with Marys son James VI of Scotland, later to succeed Elizabeth as her chosen successor? Elizabeths relations with her family were crucial, but almost as crucial were her relations with her courtiers and her councillors. Here again, the story unravels a host of interesting questions.