Central America Books

Cord Meyer is a cult personality. Every american alive after 1945 should read this book

Fast delivery, textbook needed for graduate class, used books are the only way to go!

This is truely one of the most outstanding books that I have had the privilege of reading, enjoying and experiencing in my life. The words are beautiful and the pictures show even much more of the emotions that go into the helping of such needful people. If we all could do something like this, even in a small way that would help peoples in third world countries learn, eat, play, and participate in a better life, it would be good. Thank you...Kathy!

Poststructural readings such as these have a lot to offer academia. The play of words, irony, and humor is a welcome addition to the literature of international relations scholarship, a much better influence than the sterility offered by empirical, positivist social science.

Award-winning military history author and U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel John Grenier presents The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760, an in-depth study of the impact that fifty years of warfare in a remote corner of North America had upon the larger competition between the British and French empires during the eighteenth century. Written specifically from a military history perspective, The Far Reaches of Empire chronicles how Britons and Yankees waged an efficient and effective counterinsurgency that eventually overwhelmed Acadian, Indian, and French resistance in Nova Scotia. Neither side was above using brutal or ruthless tactics; guerilla war was also practiced, well before America used it during the Revolution. A heavily researched study, featuring detailed notes, a bibliography, and an index for quick reference, enthusiastically recommended for North American military history shelves.

Are cooperatives for farmers like labor unions? Are they like corporate monopolies? Are they another sort of entity? These questions were directly relevant for the raisin growers of California in the early 1900's and for the federal government. Saker Woeste provides detailed analysis of legislation and federal court decisions about the thorny status of the cooperatives--a debate in which the involved parties were creating their own precedents.

Saker Woeste's book has a liveliness beyond what the legal topic might lead us to think. Mixed with these discussions of the law are colorful episodes that few of us outside California realized before. The book features violent night riders, tales of ethnic pressures and prejudices (especially regarding the Armenian- American community), eccentricity and idealism in the characters of the Cooperative's leaders, and the marketing story of how Sun-Maid got lots of Americans to gobble their raisins.

So the book features lots of law with lots of social history, marketing, even violence. And a wealth of pictures helps the reading. Especially interesting are the early Sun-Maid advertisements. Fans of the histories of California, of agriculture, or of American law would enjoy the book.

For Easterners, good comparison/contrasts are studies of Kentucky's Black Patch War--Night Riders among the tobacco farmers.

For those who like social history written by the comtempories of the actual events, this book is a delight. Mrs. Dana's own writing style is quick and to the point. The editors had the good sense not to get in her way. Thus, the reader gets the true flavor of what had to be an extraordinary event at that time. We just do not have that many contemporary observations from the softer sex. Mrs. Dana's comments are direct and insightful, not unlike those of another female diarists, Mary Chesnut.

As a student and a poet, I was first introduced to Meena Alexander when I was reading an example of what to expect on an Ap test (in English). I started to actually pay attention and read throught the diction and syntax to see what lay beneath, and what I say was magnificent. This book is a collectors piece for psychologists and th ecommon person. After all, who has not asked "Who am I?" This book answers that question for Meena, and if you read it yourself, it may provide a simple answer as well. But don't count on it, for Fault Lines shows us the confliction through conflicting images an example of Humanity itself.

'A Favored Place' is a highly complex analysis of wetland history, tracing its development through pre-Columbian times to the present. This is no easy task. Siemens' book guides us through detailed archaelogical aspects, how Spanish conquerors 'read' the land they found themselves in on the Mexican Gulf coast, what a nineteenth century German colonist saw, and how twentieth century planners thought and proposed to do with 'unfavourable' wetlands. Siemens presents us with a rich and elaborate text, which will be obliged reading for specialists (especially historians, and geographers), but also a delight for a more general public interested in the way perceptions diverge over what is desirable and/or feasible when we come up against such troublesome concepts as traditional and modern. Even though the book abounds in complex technical and methodological questions, amply backed up by maps, illustrations, photographs, and diagrams, Siemens has an enviable command of language, thus permitting the lay reader easy and enjoyable access to the mysteries of what has so often been considered 'unfavourable', but after this re-reading turns out to be 'favourable': that is, flooded bottom-lands. At the end of the day, no preconceived view of the subject escapes Siemens' scalpel.

Written in 1975 this Pattinson thriller is just as good as those written thirty years or more after it, in fact I can't think of a better Pattinson book than Feast of the Scorpion. In Feast of the Scorpion Englishman Mark Aston is working for the Anglo Insurance Company in the Central American city of Mendoza. His apartment has a pretty good view in both directions up the Avenida Alimirante Diaz where the Feast of the Scorpion festival's parade celebrating the defeat of the Spanish will venture down. This view is rather attractive to a group of mercenaries who wish to be inside his apartment during the parade. He doesn't really want them there but they are the friends of a beautiful woman he is dating who recently moved in with him and although he doesn't know much about her he knows if he refuses he will never see her again.

James Pattinson writes in an old man style where his characters use words that show Pattinson is obviously from a previous generation and not quite down with the lingo of today (or even the 1975 lingo when this was written) but this style does add something unique and enjoyable to his novels. Other good Pattinson novels worth checking out are Blind Date, Homecoming, The Silent Voyage, Skeleton Island, The Time of Your Life, Away With Murder, The Murmansk Assignment, Obituary for Howard Grey, Crane, The Animal Gang, Spoilers, The Golden Reef, A Car for Mr Bradley, Bavarian Sunset, The Sinister Stars, Fat Man from Colombia and Life Preserver.