Caribbean Books

Having similar background & experienced "emigrating" experiences to Canada & US, I connected easily to the experiences of the immigrant. So little has been written about Guyana, its people & its trials thus far. This is insightful,informative,descriptive, humourous,& moving,tinged with exotic Indian flavor & romance.

Having similar background & experienced "emigrating" experiences to Canada & US, I connected easily to the experiences of the immigrant. So little has been written about Guyana, its people & its trials thus far. This is insightful,informative,descriptive, humourous,& moving,tinged with exotic Indian flavor & romance.

This is one of Neruda's greatest books. It is a jorney through the history of the American Continent, from its creation, to its conquest until the present day. Most readers will know it from its chapter 'Hights of Machu Picchu' but it is certainly more than that.

It is a review of 500 hundred years of history, of war, of love, of betray. Obviously the book is a reflection of Neruda's left wing inclination, but that only adds to the book.

In Chile and other parts of Latin America this book is called "The American Bible" and it truly is. Along with Residencia en la Tierra, it is probably Neruda's finest. And is probably the book in which Neruda became what he though his role as a poet ought to be "a voice for all who had no voice".

Neruda's Canto General is a poetic retelling of the history of South and Central America from the late pre-Columbian era to the middle of the twentieth century. The book is set up like a novel, with chapters and subheadings, a straight-line narration, and a cast of characters. Neruda's communist ideology is visible throughout the work and is a major theme. Canto General leaves the reader with an interesting impression of American history seen through the eyes of the impoversihed people of South America, as well as an idea of how third-world communists perceive reality. This is truly an excellent work, and should be read by everyone.

Jasabel Buchanan and Miss Felicity Chiltingham were guests of Captain Walters of Rebecca the ship. Jasabel a beauty with long black hair and a feisty attitude is the maid to Felicity, the Governor's daughter. They are sailing to meet Felicity's dad. Along the way though the ship gets overtaken by pirates and is now the possession of Captain Neil Devlin of Tyger. Captain Devlin may be a pirate but he is a handsome and dashing one at that. What with Devlin being tall as well as having nice, shiny raven hair. Devlin takes both Jasabel and Felicity aboard his ship as his captives. One look at Jasabel has Devlin knowing his has struck gold. While sailing the open seas Devlin and his crew come upon another his called the Black Snake, commandeered by Captain Pierre Le Chameau. Pierre is one ruthless man. He takes no prisoners and no one says "No" to him. While Pierre is aboard Tyger he is introduced to Felicity. When Devlin and Jasabel are indisposed, Pierre kidnaps Felicity and sails away. Now it is a race for Devlin and his crew to go after the Black Snake and save Felicity.


I really enjoyed this book. I had romance, adventure, a strong heroine, and a sexy hero in the form of a pirate. After the success of all three Pirate's movies, what lady in her right mind wouldn't want a pirate who is the captain of his own ship to steal her away for himself. At only 75 pages Captain Devlin's Captive is a quick read but a fun one at that. I found myself settling down and before I knew it I was done. The was just one minor problem......it ended! Susanne Saville can count me in as a new fan. Plus you know Susanne has to be good when her story Captain Devlin's Captive was chosen to be featured in a new anthology called Wicked Rogues.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R8HTS5RF5YF7T 4 1/2 Lips from Two Lips Reviews!

"Captain Devlin's Captive by Susanne Saville is a delectable tale that keeps you riveted to your seat with plenty of high seas adventure, swashbuckling, and hot romance." - Susan, Two Lips Reviews

As well as saying Captain Devlin's Captive is a "beautifully-written love story" and a "fast-paced, suspenseful novel," Brenda Talley of The Romance Studio writes, "This book...grabbed my attention and would not let go. I highly recommend that you read this book which includes, not only some "robin hood" like activities on the high seas, but also a charming romance."

"Susanne Saville combines extremely rich detail with exotic locations ... It made me feel as if I was right there in the story. ... Captain Devlin and Jasabel form a dynamic duo that sizzle when they are together." - Dawnie, Fallen Angel Reviews

"...the captor/captive romance works because of the heartfelt interaction between the protagonists. Realistic details draw the reader into the story and provide a historic context for themes that still resonate with readers." - Jennifer R. Wells-Marani, Romantic Times

"...the story line and dialogue flow with ease making it stand out over most. Many times Captain Devlin expresses his interest in the Countess and treats her as such, a very admirable quality to write into the story. The characters are likable and the settings are exquisitely drawn for the reader's imagination." - Dee, Night Owl Romance Book Reviews

I read this book repeatedly since my 4th grade. I learned much from the carcajou: although he looked clumsy he had a great stamina in walking and he was afraid of noone. Later on I also paid more attention to other characters in the story: two Native American trappers, two white traders and of course many other animals who all consider carcajou the boss.
This book is easy to read and you will read it at once, but will return repeatedly. This is not a fable, animals act like real animals and people act like real people. But you will see that nature, as it is, has many tricks in its sleeve.

I first read this book in Junior High school in Minnesota. I really enjoyed the story and found myself cheering for the Wolverine who was the main character. The title "carcajou" is the Indian word for the wolverine meaning "Devil". This clever and most powerful animal on the planet (based on his size) captivated my mind completely.

For the last forty plus years since reading this outstanding book the wolverine has been my "animal of choice". I checked the book out at the school library several times while I was there.

For the past few years I have tried to purchase this outstanding book on-line for my kids to read but was disapointed to discover that it is no longer in print. Now (tonight) I found out that there is going to be another printing that will be out in December of 2000. I can hardly wait to see my children reading this book.

If you can remember Disney before cable TV and the wonderful shows they had that followed an animal from birth throughout it's life, then you have an inkling of how this book is written. I recommend this book for any child over the age of ten. Parents will love to read this book to their children - I can envision several nights of complete attention from kids as their parents unfold this charming story at bedtime.

My Mother said this book is excellent! She received it quickly and even thought the condition said "good", she rates it as excellent condition.

This is a wonderful book. It has adventure, suspense, and a love story all wrapped into one. If you are looking for a great read pick up this book if you are lucky enough to find it.

After two trips to the Caribbean I have fallen in love with the food and the people and the ambience and now I can enjoy the wonderful flavors and colors of Caribbean desserts all year long. Even reading the names of these recipes is a sensory treat, Ginger Beer, Mango Wine, Caramelized Mango Cream, Tropical Sundae with Ginger Lime Sauce, Mango Daiquiri Sorbet, Soursop Ice Cream, Ginger Creme Brulee, Tropical Chocolate Mousse, Gulab Jamoon, Rasmalai, Rum and Raisin Cake, Browm Sugar Chocolate Cake. I've made over a baker's dozen of these recipes and they're great. Now, whenever I get a yen for the Caribbean I'll just pull out Caribbean Desserts.

After two trips to the Caribbean I have fallen in love with the food and the people and the ambience and now I can enjoy the wonderful flavors and colors of Caribbean desserts all year long. Even reading the names of these recipes is a sensory treat, Ginger Beer, Mango Wine, Caramelized Mango Cream, Tropical Sundae with Ginger Lime Sauce, Mango Daiquiri Sorbet, Soursop Ice Cream, Ginger Creme Brulee, Tropical Chocolate Mousse, Gulab Jamoon, Rasmalai, Rum and Raisin Cake, Browm Sugar Chocolate Cake. I've made over a baker's dozen of these recipes and they're great. Now, whenever I get a yen for the Caribbean I'll just pull out Caribbean Desserts.

My daughter brought Isadora's book home from the library. Our family read it aloud last night and all agreed the author is a wonderful poet and gifted artist..We visited the Caribbean last year and after reading this book, my husband, daughter and I, complimented her beautifully written text and luscious artwork...Isadora captured the islands and its people to perfection.

My children love this new book by Ms. Isadora. I am a teacher and look for books where Afro-American children and situations are portrayed in a favorable light and with respect. I foound that this book not only does justice to a part of the world I come from, but gives children here in the US a realistic and wholesome look at life in the Islands. We all loved the illustrations and the simple text, which actually got our minds thinking and exploring the meanings behind each picture. I know teachers everywhere will love adding this book to their collection.

As usual, the Lonely Planet book delivers tons of information for travelers of all incomes. Especially helpful are tips on where to go to avoid cruise ship crowds. However, I had to skip the chapter on Cuba, because of the US travel ban. And the chapters on Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic should probably only be used to decide whether or not you want to go to those places. If so, you should probably buy the Lonely Planet books dedicated exclusively to them.

At 800+ pages, this is too heavy to lug around, but it's perfect for planning a trip and deciding where to visit. After you've planned your itinerary, I suggest buying a more specialized LP (Lonely Planet) guide to take with you - a small price to pay for a successful vacation.

Cuba gets the longest chapter (a whopping 59pp), followed by the Dominican Republic (48pp), Trinidad & Tobago (47pp), Bahamas (43pp), and Jamaica (42pp). However, the book's warnings about Jamaican crime will cause most travellers to rethink their itinerary. Haiti receives a token 18 pages due to the turmoil there. At the other end of the spectrum, the shortest chapters are on Saba and St. Eustatius (10pp each).

I enjoy the LP writing style, and I like their emphasis on practical tidbits. For example, don't fly directly from Aruba to the U.S. because you'll be in line for two hours at the Aruba airport due to understaffing by U.S. customs officers (yes, U.S.) who handle pre-clearance procedures. This is the kind of nuts-and-bolts information for which LP is famous, and enables visitors to avoid vacation hell.

Pet peeves: The chapters covering the 26 jurisdictions seem to be in random order - why not alphabetical? LP has always been famous for their maps, but lately their maps have been using one shade of gray for water and a slightly different shade of gray for land, which is tough on the eyes.

Perhaps the most stiking feature about Don. D. Marshall's book is its positive optimism in the absence of idealism. As the title suggests, the bleak apocalyptic picture so commonly forcasted of the Caribbean future, is not presented. Instead OPTION is the key part of the narrative of his argument. The precise aim of his argument was to not only identify the problems of Caribbean economy but also to present economic-political prescriptions that go beyond the rhetoric of common literature. Theoretically, the argument presents itself within the more eclectic framework of neo-structuralism. This theoretical framework is influenced by traditioal theories based on the Marxist type historical materialism found in world systems theory and dependency schools. However the emphasis is not on how the Structure affects the world's actors (primarily the state) but how the actors do and can indeed effect change on and exploit the structure. As he defines it neo-structuralism encompasses structuralist economics and concepts of conjuncture and geopolitics.(1998, p.9) This inturn informs his interpretation of the global challenges of today, to which some have attached the term Globalization. Central to the issue of response to global challenges, is the role of the State. Contrasting with Strange's(1996) argument about the decline of the role and autonomy of the state, Marshall's emphasis is that state role is underscored by the global challenges not minimized by it. However the concept of the state as traditionallly understood within populist or welfare typologies must be transformed. This echoes Ian Clark's (1999)work. Much like Marshall he recognises that states are not merely products of the global structure but they also create the structure by their own actions.

'. . . globalization becomes a phase in the continuing historical adaptation of the state, and not. . . its impending demise.'

Converging on the point of state transformation vis-a-vis the new global challenges, Clark (1999, p.103) says that state transformation involves the imperatives of change in state identity and that this change is linked to the evolving and unfolding of broader systemic changes. Marshall's historical illustrations in Chapter 2 elucidate the inadequacy of the concept and function of Caribbean states' role which contribute to the 'structural weakness of the Caribbean sub-region', which help perpetuate patterns of peripheralization. It is true that exogenous factors present difficulties in development but the role of the state is crucial to overcome these hurdles impeding advancement. Paraphrasing from Serbin, the Caribbean is a product of deliberate political acts but to rise successfully, the region must acquire a substance that trancends the origins of its birth.(Serbin, 1998, p. 10 quoting Giacalone 19956, p.5) The other aspect of the theoretical framework defined by Marshall was the importance of conjuncture and geopolitics. Structural opportunites arise at sensitive moments in history (conjuncture) and this in addition to the existence of the developmental state explain ascent. Empirically this was illustrated with his example of the ascent of Malaysia. Chapter 5 presented an interesting proposal of NAFTA/FTAA as an example of the link between structural opportunity and the developmental state. Mexico with a similar economic history to Caribbean states (IMF and World Bank interludes for example) and similar challenges of liberalization, provided a basis for Marshall to further deploy his argument. Despite the problems of debt and the exogenos pressures of liberalization, Mexico was able to secure for itself through politically and economicallly strategic negotiations and geopolitcal initiatives via the NAFTA/FTAA aggreement, the space for its paticualr sectors and industries. The point here for the Caribbean, is that an export-oriented economy driven by market forces but guided by a developmental state can be the answer to Caribbean ascent. Cognisance of the other limitations that impede Caribbean global competitiveness,like limited bureaucratic capactiites, is important. Marshall suggests that regional integration is essential to counter this. Unlike the rhetoric of functional integration perspectives that present integration as the cure-all prescription for Caribbean economic pathology, for Marsahll integration is only a tool to correct the structural weaknesses of the Caribbean region. As he pointed out, the national option and self-determination have desolved into archaisms. The requirements of global competitiveness - a vigourous entrepreneurial class and the capacity to negotiate an intensive neo-liberal course of action - are not possibly attainable by the indidvidual economies. It is the congruency of industrial and development policies that integration offers, that can allow the Caribbean to harness the structural opportunity that is to be found within NAFTA/FTAA. Marshall outlined extensively the technicalities of political and institutional reform and industrial policies that must occur in Chapter 6. Despite the clarity of his argument and the inclusion of sound empirical evidence, his argument fails to incorporate an in depth analysis of the kind of social transformation that his prescriptions entail. Considering the inextricable linkage of the social with the political, Marshall's casually borrowed prescription (p. 193) from Sir Arthur Lewis, recommending education campaigns and effective public relations to transform attitudes, seems altogether too flippantly dismissive of the weight of the social as an impedement to Caribbean ascent. The fragmenting power of the heterogenous social character of the Caribbean region aptly described by Serbin (1998, p. 108)must be dealt with in any discussion of the road to ascent and global competitiveness of the Caribbean. The logic of an export-oriented economy entails the attraction of foreign direct investment, of which Marshall is supportive. The dangers of increasing unchecked capital flows in an economy are ilustrated grimly by crises like the East Asian crisis of 1997. To guard against such vulneralbiltiies, Marshall advocates the 'disciplining' of capital. The feasibility of this for the Caribbean developmental state was not however convincingly argued by his vague allusions to the imposition of high taxation.(p.198) However, the surprisingly easy narrative of this book, general clarity and ingenuity of its theoretical progression and its sound empirical grounding make this book not only refreshing but useful for policy makers and all concerned abut the future of the Caribbean political economy.

Notes See Ian Clark (1999), Globalization and International Relations Theory, p. 91

References Clark, I. (1999), Globalization and International Realtions Theory, New York: Oxford University Press. Serbin, A. (1998), Sunset Over the Islands, London: Macmillan Educated Ltd. Strange, S. (1996), The Retreat of the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

I have just read Marshall's book explaining the source of the development crisis facing the Anglophone Caribbean. It is a text rich in analytical insight and valuable nuggets of empirical information. We learn here of the stymied role merchant capital in these parts, helped none by populist-driven politicians.

I was particularly excited about the theoretical framework in the book as it sought to go past global-centric and state-centric models for explaining underdevelopment in the Caribbean. Neostructuralism, as he explains, seeks to look at development opportunities that arise at historical moments and the catalytic role state and culture can play in producing successful development outcomes. Of course the record of the Caribbean has been about missed opportunities and he spends some time in Chapter 2 addressing these. More could have been said about the structure/agency debate and the kinds of institutional changes needed to improve Caribbean competitiveness, although both his opening chapter and Chapter 6 raise related issues. The Chapter on the Free Trade Area of the Americas was especially sharp about the importance of bargaining. The evidence brought to bear explaining how Mexico and Canada came to steer the NAFTA formation process in ways the US never imagined, make for interesting reading. It certainly exposes the lie which holds that countries of the South are always disadvantaged in North-South trade deals.

The final chapter features a discussion on the need to `reconstitute state power at the regional level'. It usefully combines earlier debates on the role of the state, synthesises old arguments about the problems shackling Caribbean integration, and open eyes as to the myriad possibilities that can flow provided politics is brought back to the centre of the integration process.

Where the book crosses over to a wider global audience is in its novel treatment of the globalisation phenomenon and the connection made between offshore banking and merchant capital. Pity these two strands were not brought together in his Chapter 3 on global restructuring. We are nonetheless reminded of world historical constants of boom and bust, core-periphery antinomies, inter-state/firm rivalry, and movement in the political economy of the world system. To wit, despite the myriad changes as it relates to computer technology, we should be reminded that the system's logic has not been fundamentally altered. We are back to the role capital plays and has played in human history for many centuries, millennia even (yes Frank and Gill's 1993/4 breakthrough work on world system history is read into his work as well!).

As a graduate student working in the field of Latin American studies, I find this book refreshing in its decomposition of the state, its nuanced reading of the role of capital domestically, and in its critique of neoliberal globalisation discourse. My only wish is that Macmillan Publishing & St. Martin's Press rush to get it in paperback.

This is a truly stunning cookbook. Very colorful with many pictures of the dishes already prepared for your viewing pleasure.
The pages are a nice smooth texture and just thumbing through it will make your mouth water.

If you're into Caribbean cooking, this is THE cookbook.

Get one for yourself, it's a collector's item.

I really can't make up my mind whether it's the best book on Caribbean cooking I've ever seen, or the best book on Caribbean art I've ever seen. With that said, I'll have to state that it's the best book on Caribbean cooking AND Caribbean art I've ever seen!