Central America Books

High school senior Emily Goldberg has a perfect summer planned, the highlight of which is a cross-country road trip with her two best friends before they head off to separate colleges. But her plans are drastically altered when her maternal grandmother dies suddenly and Emily's family must fly to Puerto Rico to attend the funeral. Emily experiences culture shock when she finds herself in a crowded Catholic church with hundreds of relatives she didn't even know she had, including a cousin her own age named Lucy. When Emily's mother decides to remain in Puerto Rico for the rest of the summer to cope with her grief, Emily can't refuse her father's request that she stay with her. Feeling like an outsider (and the Jew from New York whom cousin Lucy refers to as "the nuyorican,"), Emily intends to quietly suffer through two months in a world so different from her own. But when Emily's mother finally opens up about her long unspoken past, Emily begins to reach out to her new relatives, and discovers the importance of connecting to both sides of her heritage. Emily's voice is authentic and witty, and her thoughts and observations will ring true with teens. Spanish words and phrases pepper the dialogue throughout this engaging novel. Ages 12-16.

It's the summer after her senior year, right before she and her friends split up for college, and Emily Goldberg has plans. A road trip across the country with her best friends, Izzy and Adrienne. Hanging out with her boyfriend, Nate, and maybe figuring out what they're going to do at the end of the summer. But whatever else they may have held, her plans definitely hadn't included standing in a hot, crowded funeral home in a country she'd never been in, at the funeral for a grandmother she'd never met. EMILY GOLDBERG LEARNS TO SALSA is a funny, heartwarming story about family and roots, and how learning about them can teach you about yourself.

Emily's mother is from Puerto Rico, but she'd left for college, met and married Emily's father, and never gone back. Emily's never met her grandmother, or her many aunts, uncles, and cousins, until she's forced to go down to Puerto Rico for the funeral. But at least it's only for a few days...until her mother has some sort of crisis and Emily is forced to stay with her.

Sharing a bedroom with her mother, stuck in a country where she barely speaks the language, and living in her ultra-religious Tia Rosa's house with an impossible set of rules, Emily is not looking forward to the rest of the summer. It doesn't help that her cousin Lucy thinks she's a pampered princess from the mainland, and that her boyfriend back home isn't returning her calls. But readers will laugh as she's thrust into one uncomfortable situation after another. Salsa dancing for a girl with two left feet? Cooking with lard? Driving in a country with no street signs? Emily faces them all, slowly getting dragged out of the safe world she's built for herself and connecting with the family she'd never known she'd missed.

Ostow writes with an authentic teenage voice, in clear and uncluttered prose. Her descriptions of a country unfamiliar to many of her readers will fascinate and intrigue them. Writing with respect for a culture different from that of the United States isn't easy, but Ostow pulls it off with style, drawing on her personal experiences. Recommended for readers looking for a fun and enjoyable read.

Reviewed by: Dena Landon

A refreshingly varied and up-to-date coverage of areas of American culture that have been impacted significantly by Jews.

Collaboratively compiled and co-edited by Stephen H. Norwood and Eunice G. Pollack, the "Encyclopedia Of American Jewish History" is a two volume compendium of information covering every aspect of more than three and a half centuries of Jewish immigrants and their descendants with respect to their influence and impact upon American culture -- as well as the Jewish communities elsewhere in the world. Here detailed are the seminal contributions of Jewish Americans to academia, the arts, politics, the professions, the sciences, music, and American popular culture in general. Enhanced throughout, this two volume set features essays, maps, documents, tables, charts, and a thoroughly 'reader friendly' text that makes it especially appropriate and strongly recommended for school as well as community library Judaic Studies and American History reference collections.

This book is for all who have an interest in Women's Studies, American History or the West. Not only for libraries, this book makes an awesome addition to any home collection as well.

Compiled and co-edited by Gordon Morris Bakken (Professor of History, California State University, Fullerton) and Brenda Farmington (Adjunct Faculty Member, Long Beach City College), Encyclopedia Of Women In The American West is a scholarly reference studying the often-overlooked lives and roles of women on the American frontier. Alphabetical entries offer succinct summaries of great figures, events, situations, facets of daily duties, and more. A highly educational and enlightening resource, the Encyclopedia Of Women In The American West is a core recommendation for academic and public library American Western History Studies and Women's Studies reference collections, as well as an invaluable resource for writers and non-specialist general readers with an interest in studying women's experiences and contributions to American society and culture.

Since 1965 the United States has been in the midst of a most profound demographic transformation. The non-European immigrant population has increased dramatically and by 1997 approximately 55 million people (20.5 percent) of the total U.S. population were foreign-born. These newcomers are concentrated in California, Florida, Texas, and New York/New Jersey. To study these important demographic and social changes to the foundation of the American landscape, Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut began in 1990 to follow 5, 262 students enrolled in the eighth and ninth grades in Southern California and Southern Florida. Students were eligible to enter the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) if they were U.S. born but had at least one foreign-born parent (second generation) or if they themselves were foreign-born and had come to the U.S. at an early age (before age 12) (1.5 generation). Five years later in 1995-1996 a second survey of the same group of children was conducted-- this time supplemented by separate-in-depth interviews with a large sample of their parents. The purpose of this follow-up effort, which succeeded in re-interviewing 82 percent of the baseline sample, was to ascertain changes over time in their family situation, school achievement, educational and occupational aspirations, language use and preferences, ethnic identities, experiences and expectations of discrimination, and psycho-social adjustment.
The outcome of this research was two volumes-- one entitled: Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (2001). This volume focused on the patterns of acculturation, family and school life, language, identity, experiences of discrimination, self-esteem, ambition and achievement. The weakness of this work is that it does not probe very deeply into the importance of ethnicity and how it influences adaptation patterns and trajectories of the children of immigrants. The second volume entitled Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America (2001) presents seven individually authored case studies in an attempt to provide a closer look at the adaptation patterns and trajectories of youth from: Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Haiti, Mexico, Jamaica and other West Indian origins. To undertake this analysis, Rumbaut and Portes brought together a group of scholars who specialize in each of the major immigrant nationalities, made available to them the CILS data set, and invited them to combine their expertise to explain what each group was experiencing
The researchers came to a number of similar conclusions. The first was that second and 1.5 generation acculturation is being aggravated by troubles associated with coming of age in an era far more materialistic and individualistic than those encountered by immigrant children in years gone by. Today's youth often find themselves straddling different worlds and receiving conflicting signals. At home, they hear that they must work hard and do well in school to move up; on the street they learn a different lesson, that of rebellion against authority and rejection of the goals of achievement.
Unlike their European origin predecessors the present second and 1.5 generation is undergoing a process of segmented assimilation in which outcomes vary across immigrant populations and in which rapid integration and acceptance into the American mainstream represent just one possible alternative. A number of factors are decisive in determining this segmented assimilation. They include: (1) the history of the immigrant first generation, including the human capital brought by immigrant parents and the context of their reception; (2) the differential pace of acculturation among parents and children, including the development of language gaps between them; (3) the cultural and economic barriers confronted by second-generation youth in their quest for successful adaptation; and (4) the family and community resources avaliable for confronting these barriers.
Each chapter in Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America illustrates how varied the process of assimilation has become. In some instances, such as the Filipinos, a high human capital among immigrant parents combined with a relatively neutral or favorable context of reception produced a rapid mobility into the middle class. In other cases, socio-economic success depends less on advanced educational credentials in the first generation than on the possession of entrepreneurial skills and a favorable context of reception. The diverse Cuban enclave in Miami illustrates this type of assimilation as do the Vietnamese refugees whose positive reception by the U.S. government provided the grounds for reconstruction of families and communities.
In other cases, such as Mexicans, limited professional or entrepreneurial skills among the first generation, an unfavorable government reception, and a hostile societal reception means that their children seldom have the opportunity to assimilate into middle-class American circles but rather have every opportunity to sink into the native poor and underclass. Nicaraguans also face the possibility of downward assimilation because they have met with an unwelcome official reception and severe handicaps in the local labor market. The downward assimilation pattern is also evident among Haitian immigrants in Southern Florida. Hostile governmental reception, a low average human capital among the first generation, and a widespread social and labor market discrimination have produced what is arguably the most impoverished immigrant community in the region. Jamaican and other West Indian immigrants are subject to similar external discrimination, however in their case an unfavorable context of reception is partially balanced by the educational and occupational credentials of many parents, and their fluent (and distinctly accented) English.
Overall, the studies in this book provide an excellent overview of the situation faced by non-European second and 1.5 generation migrants. Rumbaut and Portes have once again established themselves as the leading research team on migration issues in the United States. A reliable source of longitudinal data accounts for the importance and richness of these studies. In addition, as members of the community they studied, many of the authors were able to offer more information or speculation as to the reasons behind the successes or failures of each particular group. In the past, immigrants (or more likely their children) first became ethnics and later plain Americans, today the journey is bumpy for non-white ethnic groups. There is no longer just one America that newcomers enter nor only one American identity that they may adopt. Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America highlights these realities and is highly recommend as a primary source to students doing upper level Sociology of Migration or Ethnic Studies courses. Individuals using this book will find helpful tools for understanding how the new non-European second and 1.5 generation immigrants build, remodel, and adapt to their lives in the United States.

This collection of studies by Rumbaut and Portes presents a highly detailed study of immigrant's children in the US from Asia, Latin American and the Caribbean. The studies cover the children's stories at various times while they are growing up making it easy to see how they deal with adolsence and coming of age. It deals with such important issues as educational ambitions, levels of discrimination, language usage (both in English and their parent's language), and relationships with their parents and the larger community around them.

Eric Janus, with a clear mind and precise hand, sets out to lead the call for reasonableness in an era of too eager politcally and socially to respond to "sexual predators" without consideration of the long term impacts of our political and legal tendencies to punish without logic and demonize without understanding the true causes of sexual violence in our everyday lives. This book raises questions about the future of us all as we rush to "fix" a problem we don't really understand and certainly don't want to talk about among ourselves.

It might not seem an inviting task to try to stem the mounting popular tide in favor of ever longer detention, by any means possible, of convicted sexual predators, but Eric Janus has managed to do so in a book that is carefully argued and evinces clearly both his wisdom and his compassion for the victims of crime. In addition to discussing the merits of extended detention of known predators and public monitoring of released sex offenders, treating both trends in the context of the question of how best to prevent sexual violence, Failure to Protect also takes up two larger social questions: why we are so focused on the "worst of the worst;" and our apparent willingness to trade civil liberties for safety (or the illusion of safety).

The book is astonishingly well written. It is lucidly organized into chapters and sections; you always know where you are in the argument. The prose is as elegant and clear as the reasoning is strong, free of the jargon that might so easily have marred a book on this subject. The punctuation and footnoting deserve commendation, as they unobtrusively guide the flow and document the argument. Rarely these days does any author get every detail of writing so right. Even the production gives evidence of unhurried care, with next to no misprints.

This is a great book for young children. Excellent first book for teaching kids about another county. I enjoyed the book very much and I am an adult! It offers lots of nice color photographs and discusses everyday life of the typical Guatemala family.

This is a great book for young children. Excellent first book for teaching kids about another county. I enjoyed the book very much and I am an adult! It offers lots of nice color photographs and discusses everyday life of the typical Guatemala family.

This book is a bit dense, but full of great information that is extremely useful for those interested in American rural life during the Progressive Era and World War I. Fry's writing style is informative and straight-forward, and the book is nicely divided into accessible partitions so readers can absorb specialized information over a period of time.

I highly recommend it!

This is not a review. I wrote the book, and I wanted to let you know what it is about.

My advisor in graduate school used to say there were only two important questions to ask when one undertakes a research project: "what's in and what's out?" and "so what?" Another way to ask the "so what" question is to say, "What will you know more about if you read my book?" Well, I hope that you'll know more about the Farm Press, Rural People, and Country Life Progressivism. The simpler, and more alliterative, way of expressing this would be people, the press, and Progressivism.

If you read my book, you'll learn something about the Midwestern Farm Press. Published in cities such as Chicago, Des Moines, and Saint Louis, farm newspapers were sent to hundreds of thousands of rural homes across the Midwest. In 1920, the Prairie Farmer, published here in Chicago, had a circulation of around one hundred thousand. This was pretty good, considering the number of farms in Illinois was about two hundred thousand. (Pause) Most Midwestern farm newspapers cost $1 a year (between $10 and $20 in today's money, depending on the year between 1895 and 1920). They were published weekly and ranged from 64 to 200 pages an issue, depending on the season. Papers were much longer during the winter, because that's when farmers and their families had leisure to read and look at advertisements. Farm newspapers reached out to all farmers, both rich and poor; all kinds of farmers subscribed, including land owners, renters, and even sharecroppers. A 1913 survey by the USDA revealed that roughly 75% of rural Midwesterners surveyed received at least one farm newspaper. Farm papers reached out to these people by keeping subscription costs low, making special offers, and providing something for every member of the farm family: articles on crop farming and livestock care, editorials about railroad legislation, columns on housekeeping and food preparation, games for the kids, even serialized fiction. So, if you read my book, you'll learn more about the farm press and what it looked like at the turn of the twentieth century.

You'll also learn something about American Progressivism. Progressivism is a difficult movement for historians to describe briefly, but basically it was a loose movement of activists who called for reform of the new American urban and industrial society. Many progressives hoped to transform the new urban centers, like Chicago, in ways that approximated the small town and rural communities in which they had grown up. But some Progressives also had a reform program for the countryside. It was called the Country Life Movement. Country Life Reformers were concerned about life on farms, often because they thought that too many people were leaving for cities. They hoped to change rural life to make it more attractive for young rural men and women, so that they'd stay on the farm. Ironically, this often meant making rural institutions, especially the rural church, the rural school, and rural households, more like their urban counterparts. Since most farm newspapers were published and edited in cities, many of them were influenced by Progressivism. Farm newspapers thus became forums for the discussion of Progressive, Country Life ideas. So if you read the book, I hope you'll learn more than you knew before about Country Life Progressivism.

Finally, if you read the book, you'll learn more about Rural People. You'll learn about the first Henry Wallace, the grandfather of Henry A. Wallace (who became Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Vice President and ran for President in 1948). The first Henry Wallace, or Uncle Henry, as he was known to his readership, was born on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. He left the farm to become a Presbyterian Pastor. He subsequently left the pastorate to return to farming, and ended up as the editor and publisher of Wallaces' Farmer, one of two major farm newspapers published in Des Moines. His concern for farming and his ability to use the Bible in an argument were both showcased in his columns. You'll also learn about Burridge D. Butler, who came to own the Prairie Farmer after running a chain of almost a dozen Midwestern daily newspapers. During the 1920s, Butler also bought the radio station WLS from Sears. But in addition to the publishers and editors of farm newspapers, you'll also learn about their readers. You'll also learn about Lucy Van Voorhis White, a farmer's wife in Dallas County, Iowa, who read Wallace's Farmer for information on better ways to raise chickens. You'll learn about John Campbell Bailey, an immigrant from Northern Ireland who lived near Rock Island, Illinois and read farm newspapers along with Chicago newspapers and Presbyterian magazines. And you'll learn about John Sanborn, a Missouri farmer who turned to reading not only when he was laid up by a broken leg (his horses ran wild and he was run over by the plow), but also when his five year old son, his only son, died of a mysterious sickness. Rural people like White, Bailey, and Sanborn read farm newspapers for information, for entertainment, and for confirmation of their view of the world. They selectively adapted the contents of what they read to their own particular needs. So if you read the book, I hope you'll learn more about Rural People.

This is an indespensible addition to the Hollywood Blacklist Canon. The author reevaluates Jack Lawson's plays, screenwriting, and political development, as well as documenting the conflicts of the Hollywood Left of the thirties and forties. The depth of research of this book is impressive, with Lawson's extensive self-analysis layered throughout the text. The author also mines such primary sources as FBI files and the then Red Baiting "Hollywood Reporter" for additional insight. A scholarly yet very readable book, this is a must for anyone interested in radical American politics of the period, Hollywood, and the Blacklist.

For many of us with an interest in the Hollywood blacklist period, John Howard Lawson appears as something of a negative symbol. Variously characterized as a Stalinist hardliner, a cultural commissar, and a hack writer, he frequently comes across as the least sympathetic of the purge victims. The image is usually that of a one dimensional minion of the party line, without either imagination or compassion. Horne's strongly focused biography attempts to get beyond the cliches to the details of the man's work as both writer and activist. The result is a much more complex portrait than what the public image conveys. But perhaps more importantly, Lawson's career also charts the rise and fall of the Communist Party in Southern California and the wrenching struggle to organize screenwriters within the industry that employed him. Thus, the book follows not only Lawson's career but those larger events that he strove so mightily to influence. Horne's meticulously researched book is indispensible for anyone interested in those topics.

Several miscellaneous comments. What we learn of Lawson the man comes mainly from his professional life and little from the personal side. I wish there were more anecdotes about the personal side that might reveal more about the man than what the writer-activist reveals, which frankly tends to confirm the cultural-commissar accusations. Also, the text could use better editing, as, for example, the numerous points at which Lawson is said to have "committed" to the party. For me, that got confusing. As to the often leveled charge that Hollywood reds smuggled propaganda lines into their movies-- that claim is thoroughly debunked by both Lawson and Horne, showing how many layers of supervision scripts had to pass through before reaching the screen. Lastly, the book is very revealing about the way in which the blacklist was used to strengthen the role of producers at the expense of writers, which, I believe, amounts to a lesser known aspect of the period.

Whatever one thinks of Lawson's politics, it's apparent that he remained a steadfast champion of social equality and economic justice throughout his life. Moreover, he participated at the center of one of America's most tumultuous and treacherous periods, with literary and film-maker contacts far and wide. In fact, it may not be possible to understand the trajectory of modern American film-making without the kind of insight into that crucial post-war period that Horne provides. Thanks to the author, the public now has an opportunity to better assess both the the Dean of the Hollywood Ten and his times. For, as the book shows, the two are inseparable in many ways-- ways that are still with us, as the anti-Moslem hysteria and repressive Patriot Act abundantly illustrate.

I'm the guy who updated and revised the Belize section of this new Fodor's guide. Some things have changed since the book went to press. I'll be glad to try to answer questions about Belize if you'll e-mail me at bzefirst@aol.com.

--Lan Sluder

I'm the guy who updated and revised the Belize section of this new Fodor's guide. Some things have changed since the book went to press. I'll be glad to try to answer questions about Belize if you'll e-mail me at bzefirst@aol.com.

--Lan Sluder

(Planeta Journal) The Handbook looks better than ever. This 15th edition of this guide provides reliable information about general tourism as well profiles of national parks and reserves in Mexico and Central America. This is a terrific guide and the format is easy to follow. Colorful pictures and maps complement the text.

Footprint have produced a cracking guide to the region, i used this book day in and day out over 6 months and found it absolutely invaluable. It was especially good in taking me away from the crowds into some of the more remote and untouched areas of Mexico and Central America. This is a great value buy, incredibly well written and extremely informative - it won`t let you down!