Central America Books

What the heck is our Congress thinking of???? This book clearly lays out how easy it will be for terrorist to get us by easily crossing the border at will. Why is this still so??? If you like this book you should also read, "U.S. Customs, Badge of Dishonor" another narrative of our Government's border blunders.

An important dimension of the "meaning" of the border text exists in the difference between the referential codes of author and reader. Since the special ontology of the border text makes the reader a conspicuous collaborator in the "writing" of the text, the same relationship of difference can obtain between the reader and herself as between reader and author. For the reader willing to engage in "border crossing," the "non-identities among the codes of the writer, the reader(s), and "sociohistorical semiotic" contexts create an ontologically special place or space within which "a remembering occurs" whose form varies with the desires and historical and political knowledge of the border crosser. Framed by a largely theoretical introduction and a meditative conclusion on the semiotics of work by Sandinistas and Chicano poets as well as her own creative writing, Hicks's discussion of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad), Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch (Rayeula) and A Manual for Manuel (Libro de Manuel) and Luisa Valenzuela's He Who Searches (Como en la guerra) and Other Weapons (Cambio de armas) inventively challenges readers to "deterritorialize" their categories of literary and political analysis. Performance artist, video maker, and activist as well as tenured professor of comparative literature, Hicks has created a theoretical work that is to academic theory and criticism something like what performance art is to theater/art/literature-a kind of genre-free zone in which the relations among and between performer, performance, and spectator/reader, writer, and text are not governed by the logic of identities and identification. Hicks's book changes its shape-as a good border crosser, trickster, or shaman does-from a good though unorthodox academic book about interesting Latin American texts to a highly charged "border handbook," an invaluable guide to the "border effects" being played out and ignored in the Southern California (or "occupied Mexico") region from which Hicks has taken her inspiration. Hicks uses holography as her metaphor for the multidimensional border text. Her introduction, "Border Writing as Deterritorialization," is an intrepid and intelligent extension of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Anti-Oedpus and Kafka. In it she explains how holography creates an image from more than one direction: "A holographic image is created when light from a laser beam is split into two beam and reflected off an object. The interaction between the two resulting pattern of light is called an interference pattern,' which can be recorded on a holographic plate." By analogy, the border metaphor produces an interaction between the connotative matrices of more than one culture. The holographic "real," then, is always understood to be a translation rather than a representation. It actively undermines any hierarchical original/alien distinction, resisting domination by the "monocultural or nonholographic" real and giving the reader the opportunity, instead, to "practice multidimensional perception and nonsynchronous memory. " In her discussion of Cien años de soledad, for example, Hicks reflects on the collective amnesia about objects and their uses that afflicts the residents of Macondo after the arrival of the gypsies (with their ice) and the banana company. Read from a holographic perspective, she suggests, Macondo's amnesia may be seen less as an instance of "magical realism" than as "realist" or "historical" documentation of the cultural effects of technology and capitalist exploitation and commodification. The Anglo reader, meanwhile, is also made aware of the precapitalist, pretechnological referential codes she or he is lacking. Time is experienced nonsynchronously by both characters and readers. García Márquez's remarkable experiments with tense, the text's flight from linearity , and the wildly uneven development of its character has perhaps less to do with the "irrationality" of the inhabitants of Macondo than with the effects of cultural domination. But, just as characters in Cien años read and respond to events in Macondo differently, so readers can be expected to respond differently to border texts--which count on this manifestation of difference in their operation. Hicks mentions, almost in passing, an immensely suggestive instance of the kinds of difference that may obtain (and be overlooked in Anglo-American literary theory and criticism) among subjectivities belonging to the "same" place and time. For the Mexicanos living in the U.S.-Mexico border region of San Diego-Tijuana, the main, socially-structuring dichotomy tends not to be Freud's male-female, but documented-undocumented. An African-American gay male fiend of mine, raised in new Orleans and now teaching in another southern state, corroborates her point, observing that the race, much more than the gender, of the person he lives with is the issue in his community. Hicks argues that neither psychoanalysis nor Marxist categories are adequate to the critical study of the characters in the works of these three authors. On the contrary, both Freud and Marx offer equally treacherous paths away from the real for Valenzuela, whose texts, Hicks maintains, overtly reject European models of subjectivity. Valenzuela, in fact, presents us with the possibility that Argentina's frightful recent history is directly lined to the aesthetics of the Renaissance humanist subject, whose repression of whatever threatens it ends up maintaining the disease of fascism. According to Hicks, Valenzuela has responded to the situation in Argentina by rewriting entry into the stable order of the Lacanian symbolic as a betrayal, using the Lacanian model to indict the years of Argentina's "dirty war." Some of the epistemological impasses of postcolonial and postructuralist theory begin to appear less than absolute from this border vantage point. Hicks's close-up look at the holographic "real," a non-ontological and therefore not easily dominated cognitive space, may usefully complete the images of irremediably colonized spaces offered by theoreticians working with the history of the British presence in South Asia, for example. There will also be readers who resist this way out. Many of us prefer the nice, stable impasses of an essentially realist epistemology (and/or its deconstruction) to the radical multiculturalism advocated and practiced by Hicks, which literally leaves nothing, including "ourselves," the "same."

Excerpted from Marguerite Waller, Review of Border Writing, published in Comparative Literature, 1995.

this book is full of facts, yet easy to read.
The introduction is amazing. (You can see if you'll
like the book by reading the intro online.)
The book gracefully builds from the intro,
giving more information and examples.
The author is a historian, and uses footnotes
and includes a detailed bibliography.

If you want to learn a lot about social attitudes
towards business success/failure around 100 years ago,
and also understand the social and business forces
that helped the successful and hindered the 'failures',
you'll want to read this book.
I chose this book because i want to learn why
some people succeed and some people fail, even though
both try and are intelligent.
The self-help books state 'hard work = success'.
Yet you and I know that's not always true.
Success doesn't result solely from effort.
And Failure doesn't always occur because a person was lazy.
There are a lot of uncontrollable variables in any persons success or failure.
If effort and preparation were all that are necessary, then why is Bill Gates (a college dropout), Larry Ellison (Oracle Corp) (a college dropout), Russell Simmons (Hip-hop record producer, college dropout) all much wealthier than 99% of the Ivy league MBA's who graduated in the last 20 years?
The author is able to present many examples, and give explanations to support his theories.

Sonny, aka Shorty, hasn't been in a classroom in years, and he spends his days doing odd jobs on the dangerous streets of Medellín, Colombia, South America. He and his best friend Alberto have a regular gig running cigarettes for a convenience-store owner, and in this line of work Alberto meets El Fantasma, a soft-spoken crime leader with a reputation for being merciless.

Soon after Alberto starts spending time away from Sonny, he shows up with a gun and fifty American dollars. Sonny knows Alberto is involved with something illegal, but rather than try to stop Alberto, he's intrigued with his friend's new secrecy and possessions. After all, the criminals in Medellín have better lives than everyone else. They have money and power and they know they're in control. Sonny, following Alberto's lead, convinces El Fantasma to take him on as an employee, specifically an assassin. What he doesn't know is that El Fantasma sees him as nothing more than a disposable object.

Don't be fooled by the title and setting of this book. Even though Sonny lives in poverty, abuse and violence, he is not a violent or evil person. In fact, he cares greatly for his friends and takes the assassin job because he believes it will help him support his mother. Matt Whyman doesn't beat the reader over the head with morality and lessons, either. Instead, he lets Sonny, a basically good kid who does the wrong thing for what he believes is the right reason, speak for himself.

BOY KILLS MAN is inspired by the true story of child assassins in Colombia.

--- Reviewed by Carlie Webber

It's common today to call Fetterman's mistake a 'fight' rather than a massacre, but since I am from the 'old school' of plains history it is a massacre to me.

This book has a couple excellent color maps and many, many colorful drawings that embellish the text to produce a very readable book. Though this is listed as juvenile literature, any reader can enjoy its content. The University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln must have had similiar feelings when they reprinted this book, which was originally printed in 1972.

The author has also issued several other volumes on the plains Indians and whether for your child, yourself, of both time spent with these small books is time well spent, indeed.

Semper Fi.

"Brazil in Focus" gives a synthesized, yet complete overview of Brazil's history, politics, society and economy. Anybody travelling through, or planning to live in Brazil would benefit greatly by reading this book, as it will help the reader understand why Brazil is what it is today, and why Brazilians act the way they do. The travel helps section, tacked onto the end of the book in five short pages, is inadequate.

Jim D. Leonard, Missionary, President of Cariri Baptist Bible College Crato, CE BRAZIL

This book describes the history of Brazil as it is and not like the Brazilians would like it to be. Every Brazilian must read this book

A Must buy for Microbrew lovers living in or planning a trip to the pacific northwest. Contains maps, brew descriptions, type of food, children allowed or not, hours of operation, and history, etc. Well worth the investment

The book presents the basics of the complex histories of New Mexcio. From the anicent Anasazi to Billy the Kid, the book brings to life the reasons these places have been entitled monuments.
This would be a great text for a high school history class - and the field trips would engage the students.

In his opening chapter, O'Connor shares examples of twinning relationships on the international, national, diocesan, parish, and neighborhood levels. The stories show food drives; summer camps featuring multicultural faith experiences; and material and personal support for education, housing, and health care programs. "From the highlands of Guatemala to an inner-city parish in Baltimore; from a Navajo school in Arizona to a rural outpost in Kenya," O'Connor writes, these exchanges illustrate the opportunities and challenges of the twinning covenant. "In every sense responding to calls for partnership and solidarity... are recognition of the relationship we have as Christians."

The author is managing editor of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati newspaper and an active participant in twinning efforts in his parish. After much study and experience with twinning, O'Connor set about to produce a basic text for establishing sister-parish relationships. In Bridges of Faith, he weaves historical information and Church teaching with first-hand stories of mission trips and interviews with twinning veterans. Though heavy on experiences within the Roman Catholic community, O'Connor's material is suited to any faith-based group with "non-paternalistic, non-proselytizing ideals."

In addition to the narrative style, Bridges of Faith engages the reader with subheads and sidebars, such as (1) seven reasons for establishing faith-based partnerships, (2) planning and carrying out mission trips, and (3) activities to enrich and expand a sister parish relationship. Finally, O'Connor has included appendixes with sample documents for getting started and a list of organizations that can help identify potential partners. All in all, this is a truly valuable book for anyone involved in or considering a twinning relationship.