Central America Books

Are cooperatives for farmers like labor unions? Are they like corporate monopolies? Are they another sort of entity? These questions were directly relevant for the raisin growers of California in the early 1900's and for the federal government. Saker Woeste provides detailed analysis of legislation and federal court decisions about the thorny status of the cooperatives--a debate in which the involved parties were creating their own precedents.

Saker Woeste's book has a liveliness beyond what the legal topic might lead us to think. Mixed with these discussions of the law are colorful episodes that few of us outside California realized before. The book features violent night riders, tales of ethnic pressures and prejudices (especially regarding the Armenian- American community), eccentricity and idealism in the characters of the Cooperative's leaders, and the marketing story of how Sun-Maid got lots of Americans to gobble their raisins.

So the book features lots of law with lots of social history, marketing, even violence. And a wealth of pictures helps the reading. Especially interesting are the early Sun-Maid advertisements. Fans of the histories of California, of agriculture, or of American law would enjoy the book.

For Easterners, good comparison/contrasts are studies of Kentucky's Black Patch War--Night Riders among the tobacco farmers.

This is one of the best collections of short stories i've ever read. It contains all kinds of stories. Funny, sad, historical, etc. One thing applies to them all. They are all very good. I've been to Bolivia, talked to a lot of people there, but nobody told me about their terrific writers. Strange! Buy this book. Especialy if you like South American litrature. Thank you Rosario Santos for collecting!

As a student and a poet, I was first introduced to Meena Alexander when I was reading an example of what to expect on an Ap test (in English). I started to actually pay attention and read throught the diction and syntax to see what lay beneath, and what I say was magnificent. This book is a collectors piece for psychologists and th ecommon person. After all, who has not asked "Who am I?" This book answers that question for Meena, and if you read it yourself, it may provide a simple answer as well. But don't count on it, for Fault Lines shows us the confliction through conflicting images an example of Humanity itself.

'A Favored Place' is a highly complex analysis of wetland history, tracing its development through pre-Columbian times to the present. This is no easy task. Siemens' book guides us through detailed archaelogical aspects, how Spanish conquerors 'read' the land they found themselves in on the Mexican Gulf coast, what a nineteenth century German colonist saw, and how twentieth century planners thought and proposed to do with 'unfavourable' wetlands. Siemens presents us with a rich and elaborate text, which will be obliged reading for specialists (especially historians, and geographers), but also a delight for a more general public interested in the way perceptions diverge over what is desirable and/or feasible when we come up against such troublesome concepts as traditional and modern. Even though the book abounds in complex technical and methodological questions, amply backed up by maps, illustrations, photographs, and diagrams, Siemens has an enviable command of language, thus permitting the lay reader easy and enjoyable access to the mysteries of what has so often been considered 'unfavourable', but after this re-reading turns out to be 'favourable': that is, flooded bottom-lands. At the end of the day, no preconceived view of the subject escapes Siemens' scalpel.

Written in 1975 this Pattinson thriller is just as good as those written thirty years or more after it, in fact I can't think of a better Pattinson book than Feast of the Scorpion. In Feast of the Scorpion Englishman Mark Aston is working for the Anglo Insurance Company in the Central American city of Mendoza. His apartment has a pretty good view in both directions up the Avenida Alimirante Diaz where the Feast of the Scorpion festival's parade celebrating the defeat of the Spanish will venture down. This view is rather attractive to a group of mercenaries who wish to be inside his apartment during the parade. He doesn't really want them there but they are the friends of a beautiful woman he is dating who recently moved in with him and although he doesn't know much about her he knows if he refuses he will never see her again.

James Pattinson writes in an old man style where his characters use words that show Pattinson is obviously from a previous generation and not quite down with the lingo of today (or even the 1975 lingo when this was written) but this style does add something unique and enjoyable to his novels. Other good Pattinson novels worth checking out are Blind Date, Homecoming, The Silent Voyage, Skeleton Island, The Time of Your Life, Away With Murder, The Murmansk Assignment, Obituary for Howard Grey, Crane, The Animal Gang, Spoilers, The Golden Reef, A Car for Mr Bradley, Bavarian Sunset, The Sinister Stars, Fat Man from Colombia and Life Preserver.

This is a "must have" book for those going to Costa Rica. It takes you on a journey of the restaurants and markets throughout the country so that you can easily make the decision on where you want to go to both eat and shop. It demystifies the ingredients used in the dishes you eat and provides extensive fact filled sections on the types of wonderful exotic fruits and vegetables you will find in the markets. It is a fun book to use and absolutely necessary to make your way across all parts of this beautiful and exotic country. It contains glossaries on many types of foods and ingredients so that you know what you are eating, lists of useful spanish words and phrases, and and up-to-date country restaurant guide with phone numbers and locations so that you don't have to guess on where you want to go eat and much more useful information, all in one book. I recommend this to anyone who is going to Costa Rica.

This is a wonderful book.
But it is not about the Mexican holiday.

Gordon Chaplin does what most people only dream of - sailing into the unknown for the sake of an adventure. Starting out of the FL. keys with his girlfriend and a loose itinerary of tracing a dead relative's footsteps - to re-discover many of the lost Mayan ruins and maybe re-discover himself as well. Along the way the reader is treated to tales of boat life and 3rd world culture, filled with magnificent descriptions of the people and their surroundings, making you feel like your standing next to him at the bar.

If your looking for that one book to end the summer with, this is it - great vacation, beach reading. This book would make for a great Jimmy Buffett song.

At last. A work we have long been waiting for from Ocean Press has finally arrived. And it is a text which will be read for centuries to come by the English-reading world.

Fidel Castro was the greatest and most human leader of the 20th Century. In this book, in presentation after presentation, Fidel embodies with burning passion the values of communion, courage, joy, humor, compassion, sorrow, remembrance, true justice and -- perhaps most important of all -- HONESTY. One comes away from the "Reader" thinking that perhaps Fidel Castro, for all the Cold War nonsense regarding East vs. West, North vs. South etc, was the greatest Christian leader of all time. Christian in fact, in deed, in thought -- rather than the vampires and their minions who have so degraded that term.

In the Big Dark of the Bush Reich, it is very easy to feel a daily despair. This book cures that. With humor, outrage, incredible brilliance, and total honesty. One example:

"The fascists stop at nothing. They try to find the weak spot. They invent the most ridiculous lies. They try to create terror and unrest among the people by telling the most outrageous lies. Their appeal is always to the gutter instincts: hatred, fear, racism, economic insecurity, selfishness, ignorance. They feed off of keeping people stupid. They resort to every method they can think of. And what do fascists do when their own institutions no longer guarantee their domination? How do they react when the mechanisms they've depended on historically to maintain their domination fail them? They simply go ahead and destroy those institutions, without a moment's look back. The fascists stop at nothing."

Commandante Castro may not make it to the 50th Anniversary of the Revolution. But he will live forever.

Viva Fidel!

This book is an inspired, readable, and labor of love account of the growth of popular education in El Salvador. The writer shares the continuing challenges faced and rewards shared by students, teachers, and those who teach the teachers.

As in El Salvador, the US, especially Texas, California, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona will increasingly face similar challenges. With the growth of the Spanish speaking populations in the U.S. over the next twenty years, educators and health care professionals will be challenged to adapt and at times abandon certain professional roles and attitudes, in favor of more indigenous methods and messengers for advancing literacy and promoting life enhancing health practices and interventions. Public policy in Texas is already shifting toward the use of community based practitioners in healthcare with a view toward building social capital in Hispanic cultures that can become self-sustaining. Professional treatment and education models are not abandoned, but new program growth may be toward the use of professionals to teach the teachers, health educators, and care givers to care for their own communities, and build community based, rather than, state driven programs.

Social service professionals in the U.S. may see their future in this book.