South America Books

Palmer's "The Shining Path of Peru", which is actually a collection of essays by noted Latin American scholars, offers perhaps the most comprehensive study of the Shining Path that I've read. The topics range from historical perspectives of the group to speculations about its future. The book provides an excellent, extremely in-depth look at Shining Path and holds a wealth of information on Latin American terrorism and politics.

A Great read for anyone who already understands a little bit about Shining Path, and even those who don't. Unique as an english language book that has assesments of this guerilla/Maoist/terrorist organization by leading Peruvian intellectuals.

Lassiter's book addresses the creation of contemporary Republican Party dominance in the South. Lassiter distinguishes the "Sunbelt" from the "South" on the basis of class and urbanization, but also history: the South is a complete society with a history going back to the 1600's, whereas the Sunbelt refers to recently developed, high-growth urban population centers. While the South comprises all classes, stata, subcultures, and races, the Sunbelt is specifically the new South of urban sprawl, suburbs, affluent regional immigrants, and (often) technology, finance, or mass retailing.

Specifically, the book addresses the urban legend that GOP operative Kevin Phillips won the South for the Republicans through a strategy of ostentatious appeals to racism. However, this question only dominates the preface and Chapter 10 (of a 12-chapter book); otherwise, the book is an outstanding study of the sociological divisions within a specific region of the Southeastern USA.

In particular, the book examines a period from around 1960 to 1975 when several policies of the New Deal came to fruition. During this period, Georgia and North Carolina (for example) experienced extremely rapid economic growth and something of a political thaw from the Talmadge & Shelby Dynasties. Federal programs, chiefly in defense and energy, stimulated manufacturing and research in the areas around Atlanta and Charlotte. In 1960, finally, Atlanta and Charlotte were associated with the "New South," in which White Power and paternalism were shunned by a cosmopolitan and business-oriented populace.

The wedge issue for these regions was the desegregation of the school districts. In 1959, the Open Schools Movement emerged to resist the scheme of closing all public schools (a scorched policy to resist desegregation, and the precursor to the "Voucher" schemes). The Open Schools Movement seldom or never endorsed the *Brown vs. [Topeka] Board of Education* decision (1954), but merely stuck to the position that compliance within the system of public schools was a practical necessity.

An important point that emerges from the complex struggles over desegregation, integration, and busing was that the affluent, managerial class of homeowners and voters (whose voting power and electoral influence far surpassed its actual numbers in the Southern cities) was opposed to the egregious racism of people like Wallace or Maddox, and insisted on colorblindness, attractive neighborhoods, safety, and "fairness" to [White] households living in the present day. Lassiter explains how the idealism and hope of the 1960's and '70's both enabled White acceptance of desegregation, and fueled the suburban sprawl that effectively restored segregation.

Definitely a first-rate, measured, and well-documented account of the era, with a strong focus on two specific cases studies (Atlanta and Charlotte).

Having had the opportunity to have learned from Lassiter at the University of Michigan, reading his book was quite a joy. Lassiter's insight and perspective on the growth of suburbia in the South and the move towards "color-blindness" as opposed to the racially conscious liberal movement offers a great theory that counters the somewhat accepted notion of individual racism as the driving force in the 1960s south. Really a great read for anyone interested in the subject, and even those who may not be as interested. Lassiter has a great way of writing that really makes this book readable.

This was a Christmas Present to my boyfriend's parents, who grew up in this city. The 2 best things about this book is the accuracy and that her sister was in 1 of the pictures!

A city's history is largely known through its buildings, and this is a fantastic little book of archival pictures of Sioux Falls buildings and the stories behind them.

Did you know that the Davenport Evans building was one of the first hospitals in Sioux Falls? Did you know that the eagle statue on the corner of Ninth and Phillips used to sit atop the old First National Bank building on that block?

There's a chapter for each major type of structure: schools, churches, government buildings, etc. Each chapter has a short introduction, followed by page after page of historic pictures, each with a short paragraph of description.

The book isn't burdened by pages and pages of text. Each chapter took me about 10 minutes of pleasant browsing and page flipping.

Dr. Odland has done a fantastic job of capturing the architectural and structural history of this city in pictures. This book has been the source of at least a dozen, "I had no idea..." moments for me, followed by field trips to find the buildings in the pictures.

I'd never heard of Mari Sandoz until the other person who reviewed Slocum House sent me a copy, along with the suggestion that the tome should be on my SYLT Guide for good western fiction. After reading it twice I'm still puzzled about why Sandoz isn't more well known, even though the book was written in 1937.

Slocum House is one of the few works of fiction I've ever read that successfully portrays the nasty side of the power/wealth battle for the west. That battle and the results can be found easily enough in the nooks and crannies of actual history and autobiography. The Albert Fountain homicide in New Mexico, the various works gradually seeping out of the cracks about Mountain Meadows, Elfigo Baca, the Salt War and the Catron Gang and even the Pat Garrett homicide all portray a time in our history when county elections were a life and death matter. Until Mari Sandoz all that's mostly escaped the notice of fiction writers.

Slogum House should not be missed--it's certainly on a par with
Lonesome Dove. It's realistic and uncompromising--but don't look
for the sweep of Lonesome Dove, or the shootouts of most westerns.
The novel is about the Slogum family of Nebraska in the late 1800's
and up to the 1930's. Gulla Slogum rules the ranch--she's greedy
and unscrupulous--willing to prositute her daughters and encourage
her sons to rob and kill in order to expand her small empire. She
keeps a map, and slowly over the years is able to add new pieces
to the Slogum holdings. The sheriff and judge are kept on the
string with payoffs--both money and the sexual favors of two of
the daughters. There are no traditional shootouts--the sons
find things are much safer if they shoot someone in the back with
a rifle from a distance--why take chances?

The husband, Ruedy, is well-meaning, but weak. The two youngest
children, Libby and Ward, are decent people. There are others
over the years who come and go--such as Butch, Gulla's sadistic
brother. This is a portrayal of frontier life at it's best and
it's worst--at a time when the indian fighting is past, and when
we think that things are civilized. Reudy and Libby and Ward
persevere--they turn out to be the strongest ones in the end.

So--no cattle drives, no shootouts in front of a saloon. In fact,
almost all the scenes are at the ranch. It's a bleak, harsh, very
tough picture of rural Nebraska. The writing is excellent--there
are no parts that you find yourself hurrying through. I keep 3-4
copies--so that when I reread the book (about once a year) I can
find it easily.

This book grabs you right away, just in seeing what the subject is. It is certainly something which I have never really thought about before, discussing soft porn and how it has been portrayed. Mr. Andrews keeps it interesting and makes you want to keep turning the pages.

This is an excellent book on a strange subject -- soft core porn. I am hardly a porn afficianado but I found this book fascinating due to Andrew's careful treatment of softcore. Too often, Andrews argues, softcore porn is seen as a 'watered down' version of hard core pornography. Against this view he points out that softcore has its own distinct aesthetic. The similarity between soft core and more 'high brow' forms of art then becomes a source of anxiety to high-brow (and especially feminist) critics. As a result the book is about more than just pornography -- it is about how American culture categorizes things as 'sophisticated' or 'smut' and it demonstrates just how complex the line between these two things is and how it has been drawn (and defended) in the US today.

Now, to be honest, the book is an academic monograph -- it is not an easy-to-read pop piece. That said, Andrew's prose is easy to read by academic standards, with a wonderful economy of expression that conveys highly complex analysis in only slightly-complex prose. But what makes this book so great is not Andrew's analytical chops -- which, to be sure, he's got in spades -- but his stupendous erudition. His mastery of the genre -- the filmography lists hundreds of movies he has watched -- and his unparalleled knowledge of ths history of pornography is truly astonishing. Like an entomologist who knows every detail of 'his species' or a Shakespeare scholar who can provide paragraphs of commentary for each line in Hamlet, Andrews simply appears to have acheived that rare feat: total knowledge of an entire genre. And this gives him the ability to understand and present the genre's relevance for our understanding of all forms of art and media.

It is difficult to believe that something as... well.. _smutty_ as soft core pornography could have something to teach us about media and society in America, but that is exactly what David Andrews manages to convince us of in this tasty book on a tasteless topic.

He reads this book over and over again. Beautiful illustrations and lots of detailed information about the Brazilian rainforest.

This book is a wonderful introduction to the rain forest and poison dart frogs for children. The story takes you through the life of a strawberry poison dart frog (my daughter Jessie's favorite frog) from egg to adult. The story is excellent and the pictures are fantastic! I have been to La Selva twice so I can say that the story and pictures are realistic. A picture quiz at the end of the book will keep your eyes open for other rain forest wildlife living in the pictures of this wonderful book. I instruct environmental education programs and use this book often. Enjoy!

For those captivated by ancient Andean imagery Don Proulx's A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography provides an indispensable guide to the colourful world of the Nasca. Located on Peru's south coast in the first centuries A.D., Nasca potters left a visual account of their world view in an astounding array of depictive designs. Drawing on forty years of study, Proulx offers the first comprehensive catalogue of Nasca motifs, along with his own identifications and interpretations. In addition to the motif catalogue, Proulx provides the most extensive description of the nine-phase Nasca pottery sequence ever published in one place. This contribution alone makes this book a "must have" reference. The Sourcebook also contains Proulx's own overview of Nasca culture, covering special topics such as religion, subsistence, daily life, material culture, and dwellings. A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography is destined to be a standard reference for generations to come. It represents the crowning achievement of Proulx's long and distinguished career, though not, we hope, the last we hear from Don Proulx.

Donald A. Proulx's book begins with a brief overview of the people who produced Nasca pottery. It then describes the rules or canons used by Nasca potters to form and decorate their pottery. It summarizes the discovery of the first Nasca pottery. It describes how 800 years of Nasca art are divided into various periods and the basis for the chronology. It also describes the methodology of both Proulx and other experts in organizing Nasca art.

Then, as Proulx writes on his website: "The centerpiece of the book is a detailed classification and description of the iconography along with an interpretation of their meaning in the context of the Nasca Culture. [Then] I use the iconography (along with archaeological evidence) to reconstruct the religion, political organization and everyday life of the people of this ancient civilization."

For the general reader like myself, the images in the "centerpiece" are incredible, and stay in the mind well after the pages are closed. Images of realistic plants, animals, birds, and fish and numerous abstract anthropomorphic creatures persist in memory, even though even to experts, some of the forms and meanings are incomprehensible today. I was particularly struck by the comparison between the images on the pottery and the shapes of the Nasca Lines, which Proulx has also studied. I poured over the reconstructions with a sense of real excitement.

I was fascinated with how Proulx created this incredible collection of images. 45 years ago as a student he was hired to catalog a collection of Peruvian artifacts. He continued his interest by photographing Nasca collections throughout Peru and the United States as well as key museum collections in Germany and Great Britain. He added all of the images he found in books as well as museum collections available on the Internet. He then digitized the entire archive and now has approximately 24,000 images in an electronic archive representing pieces from over 150 museums and private collections. There is no doubt that this book, and the conclusions Proulx reaches, are based on the largest collection of Nasca images ever assembled.

As a consumer, I asked myself, so why, oh why doesn't this book include an CD containing all of these images? It would be so much fun to search and compare images from several different pages, and perhaps even find a connection that Proulx had missed.

His answer, also perfectly comprehensible appears on his excellent website [Google "Donald A. Proulx"]: "It has always been my desire to share my archive with other scholars until I realized the legal prohibitions of distributing the disks. I would have to obtain permission from over 200 sources to be able to do this. I also discovered that the file names that I generated on my Macintosh computer are not all compatible with PCs, and many of these names would have to be modified to be used on these other operating systems."

I am very disappointed that I can't play with these images on my own computer. Nevertheless, the book is a treasure. As a lover of art and a student of how art is integrated into culture, I was enchanted. I'll return to these images over and over again.

Robert C. Ross 2008