New Books to the Store

Other Colors: Essays and a Story by Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk’s first book since winning the Nobel Prize, Other Colors is a dazzling collection of essays on his life, his city, his work, and the example of other writers.

Over the last three decades, Pamuk has written, in addition to his seven novels, scores of pieces—personal, critical, and meditative—the finest of which he has brilliantly woven together here. He opens a window on his private life, from his boyhood dislike of school to his daughter’s precocious melancholy, from his successful struggle to quit smoking to his anxiety at the prospect of testifying against some clumsy muggers who fell upon him during a visit to New York City. ... [ more ]

Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America (REVISED) by Kristian Williams disappeared from print only to now return from South End Press. Now that I live in New York, I see the real importance of policing the police. I never saw any of this kind of brutality before. It scare me sometimes: children being shot in the street, innocent citizens beaten and brutalized. I've never seen the Police as an enemy before, nor do I think of them as an enemy now. There are good policeman, there must be. I just wonder sometimes how do good policemen tolerate the really bad policemen among their ranks? Why don't the police police the police, if only just for honor and reputation's sake?

More than just a chronology of the history of police brutality in the United States, Our Enemies in Blue is a scholarly work that studies the reality of sanctioned violence against certain segments of society and the ways in which police use brutality to preserve existing structures of inequality. The simplistic myth of police officer as hero is prevalent in our society, and often obscures the facts, and silences those who would question police actions. Our Enemies in Blue examines the strong-arming, racial profiling, and other objectionable tactics used by the police on an everyday basis and provides an intelligent, in-depth critique of police brutality in all its forms. ... [ more ]

“Should become mandatory reading for all police academy students.”
— Damon Woodcock (Ret.), Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau

“Seldom does one come across a book so right on target as this one ... Our Enemies in Blue is imperative reading for anyone in the least concerned by the implications attending the rampant growth of police power and violence in the United States.”
— Ward Churchill, author of Perversions of Justice