Central America Books

(Spanish review -- English version appears below) Por fin, este excelente tomo sobre la historia dramática e importante del Batallón de San Patricio, que luchó al lado mexicano durante la intervención yanqui 1846-48, está traducido a español. Y no solo traducido, pero traducido por un general de brigada mexicano, y un historiador sobresaliente, Clever Chávez Marin. Entonces, toda la investigación rigurosa de Hogan, y toda la poesía de la historia, está disponible al lector hispanoparlante.

De herencia irlandesa (uno de sus antepasados aparece en la placa que conmemora el batallón en San Ángel, DF), Hogan también consultó en la pelicula "Heroes o Traidores", proyecto cinematográfico mexicano-americano que explora la aventura y tragedia de los San Patricios.

El libro es una respuesta fuerte a los muchos estudios extranjeros que han defendido el "destino manifiesto" de la época, y, con su estilo muy vivaz, ha alcanzado un nivel impresionante de popularidad, en México y afuera.

Hogan nos presenta una vista de de triunfos personales y históricos durante un conflicto que aun lideres norteamericanos como Grant y Lincoln consideraba vergonzoso, nos da nuevos datos y recursos derivados de su investigaciones através de muchos años, y nos permite, ya con la colaboración de Chávez Marin, celebrar los triunfos de este episodio y sus personajes memorables.

(English version of review) Finally, this excellent volume on the dramatic and important story of the San Patricio Batallion, which fought on the Mexican side during the 1846-48 Mexican War, has been translated, by a Mexican brigadier general, Clever Chávez Marin; an outstanding historian in his own right. Thus, all the rigorous research, and all the story's poetry captured by Hogan is now available to readers of Spanish.

Of Irish descent (one of his forebears appears on the plaque in a Mexico City plaza which commemorates the batallion's valor), Hogan was also consultant on the film "One Man's Hero" -- a U.S./Mexican project which explores the San Patricios' adventures and ultimate tragedies.

The book is a compelling response to many studies which continue to defend the U.S."manifest destiny" of this era, and, with its lively style, has achieved equally impressive popularity in Mexico, the U.S. and Ireland.

Hogan gives us a view of personal and historic triumphs during a conflict which even such leaders as Grant and Lincoln considered as "shameful", he gives us new facts and resources borne of his years of research, and now, with the collaboration of Chávez Marin, he permits us to celebrate the triumphs of the memorable characters who figured in this historic episode.

En este libro se nos narra la guerra más traumática que México ha tenido, por lo cual algunos de los pasajes que el autor maneja nos harán enojar (especialmente por la incapacidad de hacer algo y por saber el desenlace que tendrá). Sin embargo, el autor nos presenta un lado totalmente nuevo respecto a esta guerra: la participación de los soldados irlandeses del lado mexicano. Nos enseña que es por esta guerra por la cual los Estados Unidos es lo que es ahora, y como los irlandeses (que en ese tiempo eran los mexicanos del siglo XIX) vieron la injusticia cometida contra alguien más débil y similar a ellos que los mismos anglosajones.
Hogan hace una investigación seria que por primera vez incluye el lado mexicano, haciendolo constatar en las citas y documentos consultados. Es muy difícil que un autor supere este libro, por no decir imposible.
Si gustan saber respecto a la historia del Batallón de San Patricio olviden los demás libros y consigan este. La traducción es excelente, debido a que el traductor está inmerso en el ambito militar, por lo cual los términos usados son precisos y no pierden el sentido original del texto.
¡Excelente libro, excelente autor, excelente traducción!

Lost Treasures Of The Inca is a nonfiction picturebook written by Peter Lourie for more advanced young readers. Featuring simple yet highly informative language, and enhanced with a wealth of full-color photographs of ancient artifacts and modern-day people, it contains a brief history of the Inca empire and of modern-day archaeological expeditions, young readers will learn a great deal about this amazing past civilization. A highly educational and enthusiastically recommended book, Lost Treasure Of The Inca is certain to teach something new to readers of any age.

I loved this book. It's wonderfully written and right away I was pulled into the adventure of searching for ancient Inca gold. People of every age will not only learn from this book but they'll enjoy every minute of it. It is an artful blend of history and all out adventure. My son loved this book as well; in fact it was something we could appreciate together and from this book we shared hours of conversation. We are recommending Lost Treasure of the Inca to everyone we know. My son particularly appreciated the addition of the treasure map and now he is plotting his own search for lost Inca treasure! This is the kind of book that inspires readers to think about doing something adventurous in their own lives -- it is one of those stories that stays with you after you've put the book down. Peter Lourie is a terrific writer with a gift for making the spirit of adventure come alive on the page.

I'm a fan of Amazon exploration books, and this is one of the best I ever read. It's thoroughly engaging and hair-raising. Only in his early twenties when he embarked, Allen was a little optimistic and foolhardy. This makes for great reading, and it'll be one of the better travel books you'll pick up. One of the best of the genre.

A book as breathtakeing as the experience Byron Allen experienced. I was surprised to find so many of Byron Allen's books were no longer in print. I first heard of this modern day adventurer from a BBC report. Having the opportunity to visit England recently, I went to a popular bookstore and managed to find a copy or two of his various writings. Mr. Allen combines humor and a great intuitive knowledge to his writings and his travels. For anyone who loves a good story of adventure and daring-do, Mr. Allen's books are a must read. After finding so many out of print, I'm sorry I didn't buy more than just the two while I was able to. Although by no means a how-to book, it is absolutely the way things should be experienced.

This book is full of illustrations, paintings, political cartoons, photographs beautifully reproduced in a generous scale. Easily readable, with cultural references from slavery and native american relocation, romantic poetry and painting, "quack sciences" (phrenology), "women's problems". Highly recommended.

MADNESS IN AMERICA: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness before 1914 is a delectably readable, in depth investigation of mental illness during a time when few kind words for the clinically insane were in vogue. Psychiatry hadn't really evolved into a respectable zone of medicine until Freud and people with now well-defined disorders of the mind were grouped into madhouses and insane asylums populated by tertiary syphilitics, victims of brain tumors, and mentally retarded unfortunates. This 'untouchable' status left the population free to derive all manner of perverse etiologies from demonolgy to withcraft to religious punishment and that opened the door for not only charlatans but also for artists of every field to interpret whatever they wished. As the keenly gifted authors Lynn Gamwell and Nancy Tomes have researched and described in this lavishly illustrated tome, madness was a much maligned yet rich source of inspiration for scientists and artists alike. Extensive illustrations of the ghastly tools of the asylum doctors' trade are interwoven with beautiful and accurate renderings of the human nervous syatem and etchings, drawings and paintings by well known artists whose works were never thought to reflect madness until this volume. This book could (and most assuredly does) easily stand on its own; the fact that it accompanied an exhibition showing the drawings, instruments, and art inspired by madness during a learned physical documentary in 1995 only adds to the richness of this venture. Kudos to the authors, the publisher, and the curators for a true gift to the realm of scientifically artistic investigation.

Taussig, as his career has progressed, has embraced more and more Nietzsche's dictum that cultural representation must - absolutely must - be inherently radical. The Magic of the State perhaps exemplifies this best - being of a different conceptual order than just about anything out there in large-press anthropology. However unorthodox Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man or Defacement may have been with their incorporation of the more literary voices in ethnography and cultural studies, The Magic of the State slips between orthodox and heterodox altogether - as it simply abandons anything resembling an enthographic model, and instead takes the form of a fictional narrative that might be called anthropological literature or, more accurately, surrealist anthropology...

If you can suspend your standard expectations of what state-theory should be all about, you will find Taussig's book extremely rewarding and even humorous in spots. If you remove the historical, traditional, and methodical bases of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, and inject a generous helping of hallucinatory imagery, dada-esque playfulness, and representational experimentation (and maybe some steriods), you MIGHT come within several kilometers of describing Taussig's masterful book. But in this case, to describe would be to "write around," and this is certainly a work that should be "written with" and celebrated for the vistas from which it enables us mere mortals to see.

Taussig starts with an impressionistic analysis of a Latin American spirit possesion cult and then uses it as a model to explain how the modern state relies on various mysterious incarnations as the basis of its legal system, economics, official history, even its highways. Mixes ethnography, political theory and cultural criticism in an often unsettling but ultimately convincing performance. You WILL believe in ghosts!

This book carries on the very fine writing from this author's previous work, Merging Lines. This is an exceptionally good history of railroads in America since 1970. It explains why we see which railroad companies are still operating and what happened to the likes of Southern Pacific, Western Pacific, Conrail, Southern, Rio Grande, etc. It is a very easy read and hard to put down. I look forward to the next book from this author.

Drawing from numerous sources, Saunders weaves the economic and political history behind Railroading As We Know It Today into a work that is all at once comprehensive, insightful and engaging. This is no less than the Definitive Work and I have been recommending it as such to colleagues.

Having been with the Rock Island and Conrail for much of the time period covered, I can also attest that he seems to have gotten the facts not only right, but also in perspective.

Henry Posner III

Chairman
Railroad Development Corp.
Pittsburgh, PA

In many ways Belize has fallen into a black hole in academic literature. Who would want to study an English-speaking carribean nation located in the Yucatan? No many people see it as a serious topic, and that is a shame. I read this book before traveling to Caye Caulker several years ago. I found it very interesting, and the best academic book on Belize. Get the book if you ever plan on traveling to Belize...and who wouldn't want to?

Reading this book on Belize is a little like eating a coconut. First you have to get through the hard shell before you can enjoy the sweet nut. In this case, the hard shell is the academic context. Sutherland is a professor of anthropology at Macalester College in Minnesota. To the degree her book is directed to a professional audience, with arguments about the "core/periphery model," "ecocolonialism" and "global cultural flow," Sutherland risks losing the attention of the lay reader.

The sweet meats here are Sutherland's endlessly fascinating recollections of her own experiences in Belize, especially on Caye Caulker and on north Ambergris Caye. Sutherland's mother (the redoubtable Lois Peyton Hartley Sutherland Young) and other family members are long-time Belize hands, having first visited the country in 1971. Sutherland came to Caye Caulker in 1972, when the island had no telephone, no television, and no hotels. She has watched it, and all of Belize, change in just a decade or two from an isolated backwater to a place closely connected to the world by the Internet, pirated cable TV and an all-digital, fiber-optic telephone system.

This is also a primer on Belizean politics, economics, tourism, media and family life. Her chapter on "Flapping Around" is an eye-opener. Some may have a hard time buying Sutherland's theories that Belize "skipped modernity," jumping from developing country to "postmodern" nation and that some of the most creative cultural activity is going on "in the margins" in countries like Belize. But her delicious anecdotes of Belize since independence are reason enough to grab a copy of this book.

For those of us born in the latter half of the 20th Century, large demonstrations in our nation's capital are common-place. The first item that leapt out from Ms. Lucy Barber's Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition was the fact that this right was not available until the last few years of the 19th Century!

It began with the so-called Coxey's Army march in 1894. No more than 500 demonstrators sought to access The Capital grounds to voice their demands for government-sponsored work projects. As doing so was against the law at the time, the leaders were arrested and the followers dispersed. The book then goes on to describe similar, ever larger events: The 1913 Women Suffrage Parade and Pageant; the 1932 Bonus Army March; the cancelled 1941 Negro March on Washington; the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the 1971 Spring Offensive.

All the actions are covered using an absolutely perfect format that entails describing the purpose, the people, the plan, the program and the aftermath of each event. But, the true value in Barber's work lies not in her detailed descriptions of the events, but rather its understanding and narration of the human condition that lead - in more cases than not - one individual to conceive, organize and execute the plan of action. It is in this aspect that the book reaches a transcendent level of explanation.

We learn of Walter Waters and his quest to aid those suffering from the Depression by obtaining the - for the time - grandiose sum of $1000 for veterans of World War One. After the request was rejected by the US Senate, his followers, known as the Bonus Army, were driven out of their encampment by armed troops using tear gas. Waters was a vet who fervently believed the government needed to deliver the fund early as a result of the stock market crash. What began as a delegation from Portland, Oregon grew to a nation-wide movement of which he was proclaimed leader.

A more revolutionary zeal gripped Alice Paul, the force between the 1913 Suffrage March. With a long history of agitation in England and the US, Paul felt the women's movement needed to rise from sedate tea-room discussion to action. Relying on the English suffrage cry of "Deeds Not Words," Paul cobbled together an alliance of women's groups to stage the event the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration.

In A. Philip Randolph, we find a man conflicted by his passion to make the country he so loved more equitable. After some twenty years of an action-oriented aprroach to race equality, Randolph put togther a coalition of purely groups with the intent of staging a massive "all negro" march. But, the establishment - figuratively and literally in the form of President Franklin D. Roosevelt - cajoled and beguiled him into accepting the weak pablum of Executive Order 8802 in retrunr for cancelling the demonstration. This document called for the end of discrimination in vocational training, required defense contracts contain a clause requiring contractors not to restricty hiring by race, color creed or national original and that a board be estbalished to reveiw complaints brought about violations of the Order. In retrospect, we see clearly that Randolph achieved little or no real advancement in civil rights for his compromise

In addition to the other marches, this latest edition of Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition includes a epilogue that briefly covers more current episodes such as the Million Man March and then delivers a set of conclusions about the value and benefits derived from the actions of a few visionaries.

This book is fantastic. Barber tells great stories. The book focuses on five different marches from the last century, and each of them is fascinating and surprising. What she shows is how these dramatic events helped make marching an American political tradition. Her analysis of how everyone became obsessed with numbers is truly revealing. At a time like the present, everyone should read this book to understand both the power--and the limits of marching--as a political strategy.

Well, first let me say that if you enjoy latin food this book is for you. Written in Spanish and English it's perfect for everyone. I bought it for my wife, who left Chile as a child. These authentic recipes have been fun and delicious. Our family and friends keep inviting themselves back for dinner. It is great to finally see my wifes cooking improve.
Thanks again

Often we buy cook books that in the end do nothing but collect dust, I'm sure it's happened to you too.
Finally a Cook Book that will change that.
Maria's recipies are not only fun and easy to make, they are absolutely delicious too!
I urge to you try this magnificent book, your friends and family will be glad you did.

I really love this book, and I use it in many of my classes. It gives a lot practical infomation about ancient Mayan times in a fun way for kids to enjoy!

Mario's Mayan Journey is a great book. It has a very realistic story and terrific pictures. I read it just a few weeks before going to the Mayan ruins.