Discourse Book Reviews Samples For Students

Book Review - Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip Hop and Black Politic

Lester K. Spence's 2011 book Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip Hop and Black Politics takes a long, hard look at the current state of African-Americans in the predominant political discourse. In essence, Spence explores through this book and its scholarship the idea that rap and hip-hop culture may actually be bad for black politics; "this work represents an attempt to examine the core questions of black politics as well as the politics of the present using rap and hip-hop as the vehicle" (Spence 157). Despite galvanizing many African-Americans and creating a unique subculture, it is claimed that the ...

In the past few years, there have been shocking frequencies of sexual and physical aggression in marriages, dating, and cohabitation throughout the United States and other countries of the world. As a result of the high frequency of aggression in relationships, many scholars and researchers have carried out many studies with the intent of understanding the phenomenon. The “Dark side of courtship” is an instance of a book that documents one of the studied on the subject. The authors use qualitative interviews and other data collection methods to explore the negative interactions between males and females who are dating ...

Question 1

Discourse on a subject means that the subject is relevant and modern enough to warrant the concern of the people discussing it. This discourse usually leads to popular opinions and generalizations on the particular subject matter after continued engagement on the subject. Discourse on the subject of sexuality as tackled by Foucault reveals how discourse in the matter of sexuality led to sections of the society gaining power, over the others due to their sexual orientations. Power as understood by Foucault is an ability by a person or a circumstance to influence the decision-making and the actions of an individual. Following these ...

Thomas is married to Vanessa Jebb who comes from a diplomatic family. Jebb’s father was the first acting Secretary General of the United Nations. Thomas Hugh was a professor of History at University of Readings from 1966-1975. In 1979-1991, Thomas High was the Director of the Center for Policy Studies in London. Thomas Hugh was an ally of Margaret Thatcher during Thatcher’s reign. In his argument, Thomas Hugh presents an argument that is usually pro-European and conservative.

In the book Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Thomas traces history from 1440-1870. He begins with the Portuguese ...

There is a lot of disagreement within the subject of anthropology, this disagreements come up due to the differing concept of time. In addition, ethnographical fieldwork, a field that relates closely with anthropology is in deep discrepancy dialogue on this issue as well. A number of critiques have been made on the foundation of how the anthropologists “make their object” in the book by Johannes Fabian, majority of the ideas in the book can be traced back to the 80’s and 90’s. This book analyses how time is maneuvered in a way that it creates a boundary between “us” and “them”. ...

Question One: Is there a settled vision of human rights as the western idealists, academics, human rights crusaders and some politicians would have people believe? This question emanates from the discourse on alternative perspective by Joseph Chan on page 29 of Chapter 3 in the second paragraph towards the last sentence. Chan is at pains to explain how dissatisfied he is, with advocates and lawyers in conferences who deprecate the Asian values of human rights citing them as an excuse for the continued violation of human rights. He then states that these human rights advocates and lawyers constantly call on ...

Chan states that it is beyond dispute that Asian states have committed egregious violations of human rights. More so, it is also the case that Asian states have not lived up to the universally held notion of human rights. The whole controversy surrounding this debate on the Asian values and human rights was generated following the Bangkok Declaration of 1993. The Declaration sought to legitimize the adoption of policies and values that were distinctly different from the Western democracies concerning human rights. As stated by Singapore government spokesman, the Declaration presented the Asian point of view on human rights ...

Book Review: Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic

Paisley et al.'s book Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic charts the development of both the upper and lower class people who settled in America during its infancy. According to the authors, the politics of America as it developed were constructed and determined by the actions and activities, as well as principles, of everyone in America, not just the elite. No matter what their background, individual Americans of all shapes and sizes and economic statuses determined the politics of this infant country. Accommodation and contestation were the primary weapons by which ...

The Second World War has been regarded as the Good War for many reasons, and many have defended the participation of the United States in it as morally and rationally justified. This justification is based on the belief that Germany and Japan were threatening the power balance of the world and would have posed an impending danger to America and the rest of the free world if they were not stopped.
The book was written in 1972, in a time where the United States had waged many other wars, and the public had started to question the stand taken ...

This text helps the bodhisattva put into practice all the teachings of Buddha and this eventually leads to supreme happiness that comes through the medium of enlightenment. The bodhisattva is described as an elevated Buddhist who can attain nirvana but actually delays such an attainment due to his compassion for the suffering beings. This is an exhaustive covering of the essence and foundation of the bodhisattva’s way of life. The text is divided into three major parts
- How the text is introduced
- How the text is explained

The Pre-eminent Qualities of the Author

As is customary with such texts there ...

The Great Church in Captivity

Diverse scholarly monographs dedicated to the Orthodox Church history during the reign of King Ottoman have recently been published. One such scholarly work is that of The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence by Steven Runciman. Sir Steven has successfully penned down the patriarchate history by chronicling the events during the Ottoman rule. It is indeed a detailed and a lucid piece of work which displays the research conducted on language relevant to this theme.
However, the book gives a detailed account of ...

First published in 1813, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a comic novel of manners. The novel describes the trials and tribulations of the upper middle class English gentry of that time in finding love (Austen, 1813). Although not well known at the time of its publication, this novel and Sense and Sensibility, published earlier, have become highly popular during the 20th century and are now routinely seen on listings of the “100 best novels” or the “100 most read novels” (Donahue, 2013). Austen’s books are known for their feminine view of the world at a time when female ...

Historian Stephen Hall keenly engages in the nineteenth-century history of the African American intellectual life in his book, “A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America” (Hall, 2009). His work traces the long nineteenth century and how various black American writers induced various themes during different moments, which include, the biblical story, the American slavery paradox, ancient African story and the challenges of the black citizenship in the era of Reconstruction. He uncovers the overabundance of the black historical sources during the nineteenth century in different forms, which include; sermons, literary texts, newspapers and ...