City Lights Publishing Releases NAN DOMI and SPYING ON DEMOCRACY

Like all the great religions, Vodou has an external, public practice of rituals and ceremonies, and also an internal, mystical dimension. Before Nan Dòmi, works about Vodou have concentrated on the spectacular outward manifestations of its observance-hypnotic drumming and chanting, frenetic dancing, fits of spirit possession. But practically all reports on Vodou are outsider accounts, which means that they are stopped at the threshold. This is the only telling of Vodou's private, mystical practice available, spoken from Vodou's purest heart.

Nan Dòmi: An Initiate's Journey into Haitian Vodou
by Mimerose Beaubrun
Translated by D.J. Walker
Preface by Madison Smartt Bell

$16.95 ISBN 9780872865747 Paperback

There isn't a day that goes by without reports of spying abuses by the National Security Agency (NSA). Since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden first leaked classified documents to the Guardian UK and the Washington Post in June 2013, it has become clear that the U.S. government is conducting mass surveillance on its own people, in violation of constitutional protections, while also surveying the phone calls, emails, and other communications of allies and innocent people abroad. How did we get to this truly Orwellian moment? What role do corporations play in making this eavesdropping and spying possible? What can we do to protect ourselves?

Heidi Boghosian, in conversation with Lewis Lapham, will tackle these issues and discuss Boghosian's new book Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance at the New York Public Library's mid-Manhattan branch on Thursday, Jan 9th, 2014 at 6:30pm. The library is located at 455 Fifth Avenue (at 40th Street) in New York City, and the event will be held on the 6th floor.