Central America Books

An outstanding collection on the Old west. The format is well thought out, editing is good overall, and content is about right. The series use of actors to read material (diaries, letters,and newspaper articles) gives you a good idea of what life was truly like during the period. Though the editing is very good, I can't help feeling that they should have either spent more time on fewer categories, or spent more time on the materials covered in this set. Prices vary, so be careful (I saved $10 per set on MSRP), but still will be donating sets of this (and other titles in the series) to the local school's libraries. The kids will love it! A great gift!

An excellent overview of the four years that shaped a lot of America's values and changed America's character. The 8 volume series was never boring and I found it especially valuable in that I could break it into 1-hour commute times. The introduction cassette covered some often over-looked tidbits of history and I found it most interesting. I would certainly recommend it.

An excellent overview of the four years that shaped a lot of America's values and changed America's character. The 8 volume series was never boring and I found it especially valuable in that I could break it into 1-hour commute times. The introduction cassette covered some often over-looked tidbits of history and I found it most interesting. I would certainly recommend it.

A must have for anyone interested in Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology. I'm not sure when the new edition is coming out, though. You may want to look into that.

Dear Sirs,

I have returned the book "Pathology and genetics of tumors of the soft tissues and bones" because I have already bought by amazon.com in my other account (vencio56@hotmail.com). My mistake.

The book is very good (5 stars).
Sincerely,
Eneida Franco Vencio

This is a great book to review bone and soft tissue tumor.

What great translations for such wonderful stories!
D.E.O., Parkland College
Champaign, IL

Nancy Alonso's wit, insight and description of the challenges facing the Cuban people today resonantes those who have family and friends living in Cubas today as well as those who care about Cuba. The translation reads so well, it is sometimes feels like one is standing in the sidelines of the stories. What a wonderful series of vignettes.

This is a wonderful collection of stories from contemporary Cuba, both uniquely Cuban yet accessible to anyone. I highly recommend this work and hope that more of Alonso's stories will be translated into English.

This book is a knock up the side of the head! Now I understand the disconnect between what I was brought up to believe about the United States and the non-western world, and what is happening now e.g. US policy is really that of Britain before 1942!
Must read for all us old hippies!

Edward W. Said convincingly argued in his 1979 masterpiece, Orientalism that the West (mainly America) traditionally had a rather monolithic view of the East. This perception, according to Said, was based more on fantasy than in fact - and that the West saw the East in terms of the `other.' MIT Literary Professor Christina Klein re-visits Said's conclusions in Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961. In this work, she successfully argues that "while many American representations fit comfortably with Said's model of Orientalism, many post-war representations of noncommunist Asia do not, although they do not contradict it entirely"
(p.11).

Essentially, Klein illustrates that various cultural mediums in post-WWII America actively engage Asian topics to bridge the cultural divide between East and West. In her powerful and well written work, Klein masterfully explains "the relationship between the expansion of U.S. power into Asia between 1945 and 1961 and the simultaneous proliferation of popular American representations of Asia" (p. 5).

There are numerous examples cited in this work that provide evidence to support her main claim that America and the Orient (the East) "could learn to understand each other" (p. 200.). For instance, she brilliantly illustrates that America reached out to post-WWII Asia through films such as The King and I and The Bridges of Toko-Ri; and through magazines such as the Readers Digest and Saturday Review. These cultural mediums, asserted Klein, educated America about Asian topics - and advanced the American Cold War interest of "economic globalization" (p. 268).

Although Klein wisely stops her study in 1961, her conclusion draws parallels between recent U.S.-Asia relations and those of post-WWII such as the revival of the King and I in 1996 and a 1991 speech by Dole Foods CEO who "praised Asian Americans as a National Resource" (p. 269).

A cursory query of reviews for Klein's work resulted in an abundance of praise and admiration for her scholarship. Klein, noted one reviewer, "is not content to simplify the complexity of the time period in order to schematize things too neatly. Rather, she seeks to dig into the richness of America's expectations for Asia, including the countervailing currents within that relationship" (review by Jespersen T. Christopher). The blend and overall comparisons between cultural mediums provides the reader with a rich and compelling story.

The passages, scholarship, anecdotes, and readability of this work are impressive. But the real value of this work is that it advances a new understanding of the East and West during the Cold War - where the former educates the latter in a mutually beneficial platform. In this reviewer's opinion, there are no obvious weaknesses to this work, nor are there any harsh criticisms from other reviewers about Klein's overall thesis. This is an important work for students of the Cold War and expands nicely on Said's research on Orientalism.

Christina Klein contends that the paradigm of the Truman Doctrine can not offer a complete understanding of Cold War American culture or policy. She juxtaposes its policy of global communist containment with a 1957 speech by American diplomat Francis Wilcox that harped the need to educate Americans about the world beyond the national boundaries. This contrasts what the author terms the "global imaginary of containment" with the "global imaginary of integration." Both of these are educational projects. The first teaches the global politic as a heroic crusade against communism, the latter teaches it as a sentimental connection with the cultures of non-Americans. While acknowledging the abundance of quality scholarship that investigates the former project, Klein positions Cold War Orientalism as an investigation of the policy of Cold War internationalism and its related trope of "sentimental education." In doing so, she aims to dichotomize the discourse of history by proving that integration of the capitalist world went hand-in-hand with Soviet containment.

Klein begins by documenting the Federal policy initiatives that promoted cold war internationalism in the American populace, like the United States Information Agency's people-to-people program. These initiatives rose in the wake of McCarthyism because the Truman Doctrine had a basic rhetorical disadvantage when promoted to the American public. As shown in her analysis of National Security Council directives, a foreign policy of communist containment has the public relations problem of being defined by that which it opposes. The integration of "free" people and commodities becomes the necessary positive to imbue the ideology of containment with original purpose.

The author then considers how "middlebrow intellectuals"-the author's term for the editors of mass periodicals like Reader's Digest, claimed Cold War internationalism as a public pedagogy and instructed readers about the American commitment to cultural difference. The text importantly contends that "middlebrow"-an adjective and Klein's subtitular term-has roots in cultural populism of the 1920s. It functionally describes a process of repackaging diverse culture for mass consumption. This "offered [upwardly mobile immigrant] consumers the cultural capital that would make them feel more secure in their new class identity (Klein 64)." It also appropriates the cultural inadequacy that permeated the Untied State's post-WWI uneasiness with the global mantle. It translates this inadequacy into a call for individuals to claim the authority of widely informed knowledge. Finally, Klein contends that the "middlebrow imagination" conflated education with enjoyment and moral purpose, ironically couching human difference in the trappings of soothing universalism. To show the connection between Cold War Internationalism as public policy and middlebrow cultural project, the author compares novelized travel accounts (like James Michiner's The Voice of Asia) to policy documents like NSC-48. Both envision an Asian communism that is rabidly expansionist and interstitial states that teeter on the verge of being "lost" or safely preserved in the bloc of the free world through cultural understanding (Klein 126).

While Klein's scholarship is original, taking policies that have been discretely engaged by multiple works and disciplines (like, for example, the propaganda policy considerations of Jacques Ellul), her lexicon of sentimental internationalism also offers a fresh critique of liberalism. It remains an unfinished project to extend this exciting paradigm into wider considerations of American conflict and axes of difference.

i couldn't put this book down. the incredible deceit and politics that went on and still continues today. you could really see the humanity in both Cortes and Montezuma. very well-researched. now i want to go to mexico city and dig deep in its streets and sewers to find all that lost gold!!!!

In a letter quoted by Buddy Levy in his magnificent Conquistador, Hernan Cortes confesses that he and his men suffer from a particular "disease of the heart": a lust for gold and power. The tale of the unhappy outcome of that disease, the destruction of one of the New World's mightiest empires in an astoundingly short time by an astoundingly small handful of adventurers, is the most apparent storyline in Conquistador. Levy tells it with eloquence and accuracy.

But there's another storyline in the book that I find just as fascinating. The disease of the heart which afflicted Cortes and his men also troubled Montezuma, for the Aztec Empire, despite its achievements in science and art, was also a bloodthirsty machine that subjugated native peoples, sacrified tens of thousands to pitiless gods, and created caste systems in which the many were ground under the feet of the few. What Levy gives us, then, is a double portrait of two invalids suffering from similar illnesses. One, a European captain with fewer than 500 men, the other a divine emperor with life-or-death power over 15 million people. In the end, both of them died from their diseases, Montezuma and his empire literally, Cortes morally and (despite his sporadic religious zealotry) spiritually. Curiously, neither of them seemed to have quite the necessary stamina to survive their illness.

In telling the story of the clash between these two men, Levy explores the tactics by which Cortes managed to defeat Montezuma: a combination of bluster, good luck, superior technology, alliances with disgruntled indigenous peoples, and hard fighting. His description of La Noche Triste, the night in which Cortes and his men were forced out of the royal city of Tenochtitlan by rallying Aztecs and nearly destroyed, is surpassed only by his account of the 2-month siege that retook and destroyed the city. (Cortes, for example, dug a one-mile canal to launch battle ships in the lake surrounding Tenochtitlan. Over 200,000 Aztecs, including Montezuma, perished in the resulting fight, which Levy describes with the gusto of Homer's account of the fall of Troy.) Afterwards, Cortes built his palace on the ruins of Montezuma's.

The relationship between Montezuma and Cortes has always been a strange one, with both men appearing both attracted and repulsed by the other. Levy suggests that part of the ambivalence may've been because Montezuma, overpowered by the splendor of the invaders, fell victim to the Stockholm Syndrome (a sense of loyalty to one's oppressors). It's a fascinating suggestion.

All in all, a splendid book that combines historical narrative with much insight about how diseases of the heart can bring down both individuals and empires. Something to think about.

I was a huge fan of Levy's first biography of David Crockett, and was eager to read Conquistador. Once again Levy was able to paint an amazing portrait of these historical figures, while illuminating historical events in an entertaining manner. The final siege on Tenochtitlan makes an amazing climax to this epic.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in historical non-fiction.

This book should become a major contribution to Latin American studies, because it provides fresh perspectives on topics we'd thought we already knew well. It does so by relating Latin America to vital issues in history, notably recent research on frontier history, "the new Western history," & themes of race, class & gender. The chapter by Susan Socolow, discussing Argentine frontier women & thus engendering the history of the gauchos, is particularly strong, but so are most of the others. One drawback is that coverage is largely limited to the far margins of Spanish America (northern Mexico & Rio de la Plata regions), when there is plenty of work to do on the frontiers of core areas of Spain's New World empire, e.g. Peru & Bolivia. (There is some fine material on Brazil, but the book's main emphasis is on Spanish America.) Nevertheless, this work definitely advances understanding of important aspects of Latin American history.

This book should become a major contribution to Latin American studies, because it provides fresh perspectives on topics we'd thought we already knew well. It does so by relating Latin America to vital issues in history, notably recent research on frontier history, "the new Western history," & themes of race, class & gender. The chapter by Susan Socolow, discussing Argentine frontier women & thus engendering the history of the gauchos, is particularly strong, but so are most of the others. One drawback is that coverage is largely limited to the far margins of Spanish America (northern Mexico & Rio de la Plata regions), when there is plenty of work to do on the frontiers of core areas of Spain's New World empire, e.g. Peru & Bolivia. (There is some fine material on Brazil, but the book's main emphasis is on Spanish America.) Nevertheless, this work definitely advances understanding of important aspects of Latin American history.

This book should become a major contribution to Latin American studies, because it provides fresh perspectives on topics we'd thought we already knew well. It does so by relating Latin America to vital issues in history, notably recent research on frontier history, "the new Western history," & themes of race, class & gender. The chapter by Susan Socolow, discussing Argentine frontier women & thus engendering the history of the gauchos, is particularly strong, but so are most of the others. One drawback is that coverage is largely limited to the far margins of Spanish America (northern Mexico & Rio de la Plata regions), when there is plenty of work to do on the frontiers of core areas of Spain's New World empire, e.g. Peru & Bolivia. (There is some fine material on Brazil, but the book's main emphasis is on Spanish America.) Nevertheless, this work definitely advances understanding of important aspects of Latin American history.

This book is the result of an 1984 fact-finding mission to Nicaragua undertaken by Reed Brody, who is now with Human Rights Watch. It is based on a rigourous methodology involving sworn affadavits of personal eyewitness accounts of atrocities. The witnesses were interviewed with no Nicaraguan government presence or interference.

The book consists of detailed descriptions of numerous attacks on civilians by the Contras. A section is devoted to attacks on coffee pickers; there is one on attacks on farms and villages, and another on attacks on civilian vehicles. Also included are sections on kidnappings and rapes.

When it appeared, this book was considered dangerous enough by the Reagan administration that Brody was publicly denounced by President Reagan who attempted to smear his reputation.

Unfortunately, "Contra Terror in Nicaragua" is accurate. It provides a glimpse into the Reagan administration's policy of directing systematic violence at a civilian peasant population for the purpose of ousting the government of Nicaragua. It will be recalled that this government won internationally certified elections in 1984 and was the choice of the people. The campaign of violence was unremitting and lasted about nine years.

Brody's book is an important historical document on an extremely sad and disturbing episode in American foreign policy. The people in Washington who were responsible for this are rightly regarded as war criminals. This includes John Negroponte, currently US ambassador to Iraq. From 1981-84 he was overseeing operation of the Contras from their bases in Honduras, where he was US ambassador.

We now have a presidential candidate who chants to an old Beach Boys tune Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran and who twenty years ago voted to bomb Nicaragua. Here we may read the devastating results of that anti-life policy. It is no joke. War is no joke. War is hell.

Every US citizen needs this year to read this book, to remember our taxpayer supported terrorist army which blew up health care clinics, schools and the simple bamboo homes of very poor people.

Reed Brody is the former Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York, and as a skilled prosecutor, knows the rules of evidence in presenting a compelling case beyond any reasonable doubt.

In this book he leaves no room for doubt regarding the crimes against humanity committed by our government against the poor people of Nicaragua twenty years ago. He presents undeniable testimony of incidents of crimes against humanity committed by our mercenary terrorist guerrilla army, inclduing rapes, kidnappings and deadly attacks against civilian vehicles, farms and villages and agricultural workers.

He lays open the case in a compelling introduction, he states in two and half dozen incidents, and concludes with an afterword and with three appendices entitled: Verfication, in which he describes the methodology and adherence to reliable rules of evidence; Who are the contra?, in which he describes at great length the make-up of the leadership as well as their illegal "private" US funding, and closes with a long chronology of contra attacks up to that time.

In this present era of imperial warfare, in which approved journalists are "embedded" within the attacking US army and thus kept from performing their free and independednt function, in which news reports are heavily Redacted by the media monopolies to keep the US public from an informed decision and to cover up our present crimes against humanity, and in which independent reporters of other nations are fired upon by our troops to keep the truth of our barbarous war crimes from emerging, we must remember this time when it was possible for courageous US citizens to travel to the scenes of our terrorist attacks upon civilian populations and report them to us at home, truthfully and undeniably. Let us study carefully these cases of Atty. Reed Brody, examine his methodology, and even if unable to travel to Fallujah and Guantanamo and elsewhere to report back the abuses by our troops, at least we can work so that never again we suffer under another rogue president who commits our nation to A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq, 2001-2007.

This is an important historical record. Don't expect any lavish prose or entertaining reading. This is "just the facts", documenting case after case of attacks against civilians by lavishly US funded and orchestrated Contra forces in the 1980's.

In the book, you get an introductory explanation of the methods and sources for the information, followed by background information of the political climate. Then you get a number of selected individual cases of attacks on civilians that are thoroughly detailed with names, dates and descriptions. Each of these stories is told over a couple pages each. Lastly are a cronology of Contra attacks on civilians between 1981 and 1984 which seems to list a couple hundred instances with a short description of each, and the source notes.

Many cases are compiled from the reports of groups like America's Watch, Center for Constitutional Rights, Washington Office on Latin America...etc. Many are compiled from eye-witness and victim's affidavits, and from the extensive report of Reed Brody's fact finding team from between 1984-85 in Nicaragua.

What you will see here are the tactics used by the people that the US government was hailing as "freedom fighters", and whom Reagan called "the moral equals of our founding fathers". The overriding point, and what this book shows, is that the attacks against civilians were not random errors, or the acts of a few renegade contras. They were conscious, pervasive and intentional policy of the leadership.

I'm writing this review over 15 years after the publication of this book, but it's very important to know what our government was really doing. And, in the year 2002, When "terrorism" is on everyone's mind, and you hear our leaders repeatedly saying things like: "there's no justification for attacking civilians" or how we must go after any evil "states that sponsor terrorism", it's important to remember the not too distant history, and consider how well our own government would measure up to these principles.

This book is outstanding! It has really easy to use time appropiate recipes that include options that might be easier to find today. This book covers American Indians, The Colonial Period, The Revolutionary War, Westward Expansion, The Civil War, and the last 6 chapters break up the U.S. and give recipes likely to be found in those areas. At the end of each chapter is a great resource of books on the subject with detailed discriptions that are VERY helpful! If you are a Teacher or a Homeschooler this book is a must!

As a homeschooling Mom this has been so fun. I can tie in recipes from the times with the time period they are studying, and it gives extra info. It has been a wonderful resource to ad to our studies.

I first found this book at a Library and instantly fell in love. I knew I had to get one of my own. It is such a treasure trove of information and the recipes are so interesting. In my search for a good resource on Native Americans, I have finally hit the jack pot. I love this book and highly highly recommend it for anyone....especially if your a homeschooler!

Martin Mitchinson's "The Darien Gap" is a wonderful book, a great collection of histories, mythologies, and personal adventures and reflections. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in traveling in Central America, as well as for anyone who loves good, and thoughtful travel writing.

In a place that is infamous for kidnappings, Colombian Guerrillas, and thick jungles, Mitchinson performs the unthinkable act of remaining in the region for a year and a half to gather together Darien's many stories into a book that is a pleasure to read. In a series of wonderfully-crafted vignettes, Mitchinson writes with a very personal voice to bring Darien's jungle to the reader - from the 65 million years of ancient geological formation, to native histories, pirates, eccentrics, and ridiculous canal schemes that are part of Darien's past and present.

This book has just been released, but I've found a handful of early reviews:

"What Mitchinson has produced, with bugs, mud, graces, dangers, superstitions and all... is a wonderfully entertaining book full of close observation and flourishes of poetry."

- Garry Geddes, poet and author of "Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things"
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"... impressive and compelling..."

"... threading the history of the area, with accounts of its indigenous peoples and early explorations, into a dramatic and involving tapestry. There is much humor here,... passages of genuine suspense, including a harrowing account of a near-drowning in a jungle river..."

- The Vancouver Sun
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"... the summer's best read."

- The North Island Midweek
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"...hairy enough to scare even the most intrepid armchair traveler. But the stories that he tells of this wild barrier make his book come doubly alive.

Combining one part history with one part travelogue... escape reading at its best."

-The Sun Times
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"... personal anecdotes are lush with honesty and sparse with reservation... it sucks you from your reading chair only to plant you in the mangrove swamps of the Darien Gap."

"...intriguing tale connects the reader to Mitchinson, the people of Darien and the Darien province itself."

- Comox Valley Record

The Darien Gap beautifully weaves together the local politics, geological and colonial history with native folklore in a personal voice. Finally, a travel book not focused on some hero conquering a new land. Mitchinson brings honesty and humor at his own discomfort. He offers a well researched story of a patch of jungle that "is the only missing link in what would otherwise be 16000 miles of uninterupted highway from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego". The book is brilliant!

This is a marvellous read and a marvellous exploration. Author Martin Mitchinson takes us through a remote corner of the Panamanian rainforest on a journey that is paradoxically both leisurely and exhausting. At his side we undergo a full range of jungle miseries, both grim and entertaining, dipping pleasantly all the while into byways of history, geography and legend.
Whether he was enduring perilous hours in a dugout canoe or trekking painfully across the continental divide, Mitchinson held me captivated. By turns I laughed out loud at encounters with endearing characters or was moved by rippling passages of poetry and philosophy.
At its best, and in common with the best of books and journeys, The Darien Gap transforms one's vision of life and of the world. Highly recommended.

This book is for anyone immersed in the human condition, waging a war internally and silently stuggling externally. Galeano's collection of thoughts and essays and stories stirs the emotions of the reader and forces them to consider the entirety of the Latin American canon of literature as a formidable one. It encompasses genres such as autobiography, biography, testimony, prose, and short story. This is poetry of the soul for the soul, and shouldn't be limited to those obscure literature classes dealing with oppression

is as Galeano define "Days and Nights of Love and War". The author open the memory box and let escape the pain and the love, the sadness and the joy. That is not only his box, it's my box too, all latinoamericans' box. So, when we open it we live.

The personal testimony of one of Latin America's foremost contemporary political writers, Eduardo Galeano's Days And Nights Of Love And War blends memoir journaling with an eloquent history to record the lives and struggles of the Latin American people under two decades of unimaginable violence and extreme repression. Galeano combines straight-forward reportage with personal vignettes, interviews, travelogues, and folklore with an impressive and engaging emotional enrichment that includes anger, irony, sadness, and humor. Days And Nights Of Love And War is very highly recommended for students of late 20th century Latin American political history and culture.