South America Books

Excellent story and photographs of a real little boy's life in the rain forest. Particularly useful for teachers to integrate science, social studies, even a math component, as students may calculate the amount of sap needed for a 90 pound ball of rubber, etc. I also liked the facing pages of historical information. For younger children, the focus can simply be on Antonio's own story. Older students may read more details of the historical struggle to gain economic independence and preserve the forest. The historical background and the dangers of daily life are recounted in a matter-of-fact manner, giving a realistic and yet over all positive view of the lives of people who are conserving the beauty of the forest and their way of life. I am delighted to find this book is still available! A colleague who searched for it typed "Rainforest" as one word, and found nothing. "Antonio's Rain Forest" really is something. I highly recommend it.

Antonio's Rain Forest is an outstanding contribution to anyschool or community library collection on nature, ecology, and livingin the Amazon rainforest for young readers. Beautiful photographs by Edward Parker showcase this picturebook adaptation of Anna Lewington's original text. Children are informed of the economic value and history of the rainforest and its rubber plantations as 8 year old Antonio Jose describes the life and work of his family who make a simple living from their surroundings. Portuguese words are provided with pronunciation guides. Highly recommended.

This book covers the vast geographical contrasts and natural wonders of Argentina..

The author presents through his photographs many truly outstanding and simply stunning landscapes which are well captured and composed. Argentina has go to be one of the MOST geographically beautiful countries in the world and this book clearly illustrates that. Highly recommended !

very complete... gorgeous pictures, excelent prints, argentina, what more can i say?

This is by far the best text devoted to the history of Arlington national cemetery I've seen. It begins with a detailed hisory of how the Washington-Lee family aquired the property, and the government seizure during the Civil war.. The property was used as a burial ground in part to prevent Robert E. Lee family from returning. The book goes on to list numerous notables now buried there and includes a brief but informative biography of each, most have pictures of the gravesite. Finally the book lists the many memorials inside and around the cemetery and the offical requirements for burial at Arlington.. A Fascinating book, I've read it several times and find something new every time I pick it up. Well worth purchasing for the history buff, or the casual tourist who wants to learn more about our most important national shrine.

I first found this book in it's first edition in 1994 after a trip to D.C. After picking it up from the library, I really wished that I had it when I was in D.C. I read it from cover to cover and learned so much about Arlington. I picked up the second edition during a visit to ANC in September, 2001. Every grave marker and memorial of renown is mentioned and the history behind the larger monuments is very good. It would be really nice if color pictures accompanied the text. I hope that Mr. Peters continues to update the book every now and then.

I read this book a few months before moving to Surry county from California. It has given me a lot of sobering yet uplifting perspective. Since moving here, I have met the author, and a few of the people mentioned in the book. It has been a wonderful experience.

I am researching my family ancestry and because I was born in Surry County and still have many relatives still living there, I am very anxious to read and add a copy of this book to my family library!

Thank you Dr. Scales Thompson for putting this precious time of events on paper and making it available to the public.

Rozita Smith

"Honest, straightforward and audacious" is how the author describes Che Guevara, the Argentine who along with Fidel Castro led the Cuban revolution to victory. Such description is the polar opposite of the dishonest, double-speaking and cowardly character of imperialist leaders in Che's time: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, as well as today: Bush, Clinton and Bush. Some of who used their wealth and privileges to evade the fire of war. All of who glibly sent young people off to slaughter others or be killed while trying to protect the interests of the ruling rich.

This 36-page pamphlet, including the excellent footnotes and photographs, is a wonderful introduction to the Cuban revolution and its foreign policy. It is made up of easy-to-read interviews with "Pombo" - Harry Villegas, brigadier general in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba who fought alongside Che during the final battles of the Cuban revolution as well as with freedom fighters in the Congo and Bolivia.

Additional reading: Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes; Our History is still being written by Armando Choy; Capitalism's Long Hot Winter Has Begun by Jack Barnes.

One way to measure the Cuban Revolution is to look at the women and men it produces. This pamphlet does just that. It both tells us about Harry Villegas's amazing life and gives us a number of his insights. Villegas (also known as Pombo) joined the Revolution as a working class youth in rural Cuba. Since then, his life has been dedicated to world solidarity, frequently risking his life. Pombo served at the side of Che Guevara in Cuba, Africa, and Bolivia. After Che was executed by the CIA, Pombo led a small band of Cubans in a courageous escape from Bolivia. After that, he served in Angola as part of the Cuban force that helped defeat the invasion by apartheid South Africa. What a life! This man and his insights are a true reflection of the Cuban revolution and its incredible record of solidarity with the oppressed. While Amazon may say this book is not available from time to time, it is always available from booksfrompathfinder store listed under new and used at the top of this page.

This book constitutes an impartial view about Pinochet, who is known around the world only by the hunreds of publications written by people who backed Allende (by the way, he was elected by only by the 36% of the votes) and lead Chile to a situation that almost drove the country to civil war, as Allende's regime tried to make of Chile a new Cuba, during the years of the cold war.

Mrs Oyarzun is a very well known and respected journalist, and the translation of her book into english will be very helpful to have an independent view of the chilean marxist experiment.

Reviewing the listing of books in connection with Chile's former President Augusto Pinochet, I detect that in English there is a lack of impartial publications regarding the difficult years of the so-called "Unidad Popular" (Allende's regime), which drove to Chile's military government. In Chile there is plenty of information on all sides. We Chileans lived the critical years from the end of the sixties to 1990, and obviously for us the opinions on the figures of Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet are quite divided. This book is very interesting for Spanish-speaking readers, because it depicts several personal aspects of the personality of former President Pinochet, and has been written by one of Chile's most famous journalists. If books like this one were available in English, the true of the history of Chile would be easier to understand for foreigners.

Great review of life in Rome. Good pictures. Fun mystery for kids to solve. My girls ages 6 & 8 loved the book, especially the mystery. We have enjoyed Ardagh's History Detectives of Greece and Egypt as well.

This is a easy read, better then Usbourne.
The illusrations are great and covers important figures,
religion, government,science, sports,daily life, arts,
everything. Then it finishes with a mystery for review.
Sure to keep kids and adults interested.

I was very impressed. It was in great condition, and it took no time to be delivered!

At first I found myself a little bored reading BANANERAS, Dana Frank's total reimagination of the labor union as the engine of women's liberation in first Honduras then elsewhere south of the border, but then the sweep of her narrative began to carry me away. Not liking bananas myself, I had somehow merely lived my whole life without ever inquiring about the women who picked and packed them. Who were these women? How have they eked out meaningful existences desite isolation and backbreaking labor? How do they change history with solidarity and an unspoken feminism? For, as Dr. Frank reveals wryly, the Latin American bananeras recoil from the word "feminism" itself, treating it as though it had no meaning nor place in the vocabulary of the modern radical worker. In a way, Frank's book is the story about how a word lives even when it is judged irrelevant and in consequence unspoken.

Richly researeched, the new BANANERAS makes manifest in rich ways the geometrical growth of the new labor unions powered by women's work (though some of the locals employ Latins of several genders). Frank was there when the women met and organized; she attended some of the furit packers' conferences and showed how uneducated women managed to cope with, then translate for the benefit of others, both absent and present, hifalutin technical and political concepts such as transnational trade agreements. She showed what happens when one woman's isolation showly begins to transform, like the shards of a broken flower pot, into a multifaceted, yet striking new mosaic of terra cotta. She brings her characters to life with simple pen strokes, like Colette. Here she is, for example, introducing us to Selfa Sandoval, a Guatemalan fruit worker: "Selfa is a laughing, energetic, tough cookie, who remains powerful in her union because she works hard and fellow rank-and-file members know it." Not only do we see Sandoval herself, but we see her in context of a group of shadowy, but respectful, union members in the general population.

Friends who have studied with Dr. Frank, in the seaside town of Santa Cruz perhaps two hours south of here, have talked about her work in history as a three-pronged trident, like Neptune, ready to strike at a single second. One fork shows us that, there are no Americans, there are only "Americans." Another looks for the hope of successful social movements. And a third, and the sharpest of all, is her brain.

Covering developments between 1890 and 1980, Green's book is the best place to begin to understand the appropriation of public space by gay male Brazilians. Besides seeming to have read everything written by or about male homosexuality in Brazil (his book's apparatus occupies more than a hundred pages), including archived forensic and psychiatric case records, Green draws on seventy life history interviews and a cache of illustrations from across the twentieth century.

Green shows that the gap between representation of rigid (masculine-active) bofe and (feminine-passive and frequently transvestite) bicha roles and how Brazilian males lived their sexualities increased during 1960s, and subsequently has been challenged in public discourse, but that behavior and purportedly universal norms were already noncongruent during the 1930s. Besides cataloging a history of growing bicha pride and steady bofe bashful ambivalence, Green also shows that bicha prominence in carnival is a tradition that is relatively recent, emerging during the 1950s, and suppressed for a few years at the beginning of the 1970s.

Green sensibly stresses the emergence during the 1950s and 60s of first bicha and then gay publications. The American homophile movement then also involved only a few determined individuals and fugitive publications. Rio's famed beaches have been important as places where men of varying economic status who are sexually interested in men meet - and socialize, and develop group consciousness, as well as engineering sexual liaisons. Brazilian gay clubs, bars, and restaurants cluster near beaches with gay enclaves.

It's indeed the most important register on brazilian homosexuality ever done. Green is a genius and this book must be read not only by homosexuals, but all kind of people that would like to understand a little about the gay subculture in Brazil. The author is brilliant and deserves our respect.

An excellent work by someone who knows what they are talking about. I'm going to use Rose's book in my classes.

R.S. Rose has done a fantastic job of selecting those events in Brazilian history that have led to a distorted view of violence both by the country's shrinking upper classes and by the multitudes in the mire beneath them. His use of historical data to underline sociological concerns is equally lucid, and a methodology that should be seen more often. This is a rare book. Do not pass it by!