Mary McIntosh Knihy

Every day disaster strikes somewhere in the world. Some disasters have always been with us: earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes and floods are as common as they were in the past. Others, like the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, are the result of our own technology. This book looks at both types of disaster, and at what we can learn from them.

Despite much talk of its decline, the nuclear family persists as a structure central to contemporary society, a fact to be lamented, according to the ideas of Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh. The Anti-social Family dissects the network of household, kinship and sexual relations that constitute the family form in advanced capitalist societies to show how they reinforce conditions of inequality. This classic work explores the personal and social needs that the family promises to meet but more often denies, and proposes moral and political practices for more egalitarian caring alternatives.

Afghanistan was an American crusade to win the war against the “Evil Soviet Empire” and remake the world in its own image. This goes right to the heart of understanding the destiny of the Western Dream. Instead of a dream the US is caught in a nightmare. Now Americans long for a spiritual regeneration away from the vision of war as an honorable sacrifice to a vision of peace that serves all. No one seems able to make the process move in the right direction. We assimilated a profound understanding over four decades of how to envision moving from war to peace that is now in our novelized memoir, The Three Nights of Desmond at the Kabul Hotel.