Central America Books

This book is an absolute must for any academic working in highland Guatemala. Probably not very good for the casual tourist though.

This book is an unrivalled source on the appearance, weapons, backgrounds, and experiences of the brutal Spanish veterans who brought several great American Empires to their knees in the 16th Century.

The author, John Pohl, has already written several titles for Osprey on the subject of Mexican-Conquistador warfare, and has extensive experience in the study of American civilizations from Canada to Central America. The illustrator, Adam Hook, is also known for his knowledge of the 'Indians' and their material culture and appearances, and is well established with his father and sister as one of Osprey's best artists.

The Conquistador era began in 1492. In that year, Columbus famously 'discovered' the New World while Ferdinand and Isabella were taking the surrender of Moorish-held Granada and cruelly expelling all the Jews, Moors, and other ethnic and religious minorities from Spain. The very aura of the time was one of warfare, intolerance, and greed, and would soon spread into the Americas. As early as 1493, the Spanish explorers had made leathal enemies amongst the natives for their cruel, drunken, and lustful behavior. In the end, however, the superior fighting styles, politics, and brutality of the Spaniards would win. By 1547, when Hernando Cortez died, the Spaniards had conquered the New World and many of its tribes and kingdoms from New Mexico to Peru, and had campaigned against some of the same tribes the Americans would fight in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

The Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 1520's is understandably the focus of a good chunk of the 64 page book. The success the Spaniards had against the formidable Mexicans ('Aztecs') can be attributed to many factors-though firearms are not one of them. The highly chivalrous and ritualistic military methods of the Indians against the professional brutality of the Europeans was definitely a factor, though superior training, fencing skills, Indian superstition and disunity, and maybe even luck all played their roles as well-oh, and let's not forget Cortez's army of at least 150,000 Indian allies!

The book follows the usual Warrior format-chronology, recruitment, organization, training, tactics, clothing/armor/weapons, diplomacy, campaigning, experience of battle, and a conclusion based on the last years of the Conquistadors. The book follows the experiences of a hypothetical Conquistador called Miguel, and at times reads almost like a novel. Overall, the text is an excellent source on the Conquistadors and is really a decent source for the elite of all the contemporary European armies.

The plates add lots of color to the book. Along with four spirited depictions of battle with Indian tribesmen, they also flesh out the appearance and gear of the Conquistadors along with their priests, women, and Indian allies.

In short this book is one of the best on this small but tenacious group of merciless killers-and the equally brutal Mexican Empire they toppled.

The author succiently (204 pages) uses the ongoing Indo-Pakistani conflict as a study to compare and evaluate deterrence theory and non-proliferation theory. Hagerty also adepty explaines the major focal points for this crisis. Perfect for students examining South Asia or aspects of nuclear proliferation.

Using the later 20th/early 21st century as her canvas, Linda Faye Williams paints a disturbing and all too true portrait of American social policy's inherently racialized construct. Our formal declarations of `equal opportunity' are undercut by the cultural reality of racist social policy. Like Dorothy Roberts, she argues that gender and racial hierarchies intersect to specifically disadvantage black women.

Unlike Robert's earlier work, this book goes all the way back to the emancipation era and covers many more issue areas beyond reproduction. When the federal government has intervened for racial equality, it has only done so in periods which are relatively fleetingly in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.

Williams has her most provocative research in a chapter on the black community's consistent support for President Bill Clinton (1993-2001). Blacks had consistently supported the Clinton administration at levels which easily overshadowed the total support simultaneously received from white voters. Although she does not provide a detailed analysis of intra- African American socioeconomic issues, Williams does ask us to consider how goals and stereotypes subtly but pervasively co-exist in public policy programs.

Those ultimately racialized voter patterns were established and then further solidified even as Clinton signed `welfare reform' which specifically built off the specter of the `welfare queen'; a presumably African American woman who lived off of the government instead of having a `job' and then raising her kids `right'. Ironically, before the federal welfare program became racially integrated in the 1960's, the white welfare recipients were intentionally supposed to stay at home with their children and not work outside of the home specifically so that their children would grow up `right'.

Williams correctly recognizes that any `universal' public policy does fact take on racial connotations because of our society's fundamentally racialized nature. People who prefer the status quo (and the ensuing racial constructs) are not going to be happy with a program which then attempts to equalize the playing field for all Americans. Talking about democracy is one thing, but sharing it with somebody who looks different from the self still makes many Americans and our public officials uncomfortable in spite of their `tolerant' public demeanor.

This book is an essential read for people studying race/ethnicity, but I also think it needs to be at the top of public administration reading lists. Conceeding that public policy is not value neutral is the first step in making a society which truly is equal.

The humorous title to this review is from page 130 of Dvora Yanow's book and is an excerpted interview between a policeman and a crime suspect. Yanow's serious book is a timely historical overview of the use of racial and ethnic categories by government bureaus. Her book contains example government affirmative action forms, college applications, vendor certification forms, housing fair lending notices, job training forms, and police department statistical crime report forms. Perhaps most amusing is a Matrix for Generating Race/Ethnicity of a Child by the California Department of Health Services that is reminiscent of something out of a Rube Goldberg cartoon.

Her thesis is that race and ethnicity have always been state-constructed categories and are an (quote) anthropological and scientific joke (end quote). Her book points out the absurdity of trying to categorize people of mixed race or who can pass as white, of categorizing criminals by eye-balling, of lumping groups that have nothing in common, such as Asian-Pacific Islanders, and of obscuring more important groupings such as poor whites. She believes racial and ethnic categories are proxies for group origin identity stories. But Yanow asks (quote) why are identity stories largely confined to race-ethnic terms, especially when those terms aren't real? (end quote). She states that the continuing use of such categories runs against the grain of classical liberalism and what it means to be American. She reminds us that the public has apparently largely forgotten the Nazi regime in which population control and genocide depended on race-ethnic labeling and marking by central government.

In a closing Yanow minces few words when she states that racial and ethnic categories have become the (quote) foundations for the redistribution of wealth in the form of various publicly funded programs and eligibilities for their services (end quote). She emphatically states:

(start quote) Yet we cannot - I cannot conceive of a way in which we can - achieve a socially egalitarian society when we constantly remind ourselves, almost daily, of differences of the sort that are built - conceptually, cognitively, linguistically - into the race-ethnic language that we use. The categories "sell" concepts of race and ethnicity through dispassionate documents and administrative means that most people would not give a second thought to, but that have material consequences...It seems to me, in light of the preceding case examples, quite evident that in order to achieve a socially just society, we need to give up these ways of counting ourselves and find others....Yet perhaps it is time to stop using race-ethnicity as a proxy for
economic and behavioral problems, lest our very language continue to perpetuate inequality...Race and ethnicity data, as established under the OMB (Federal Office of Management and Budget) definitions and Guidelines, provide ways of naming discriminatory practices and seeking legal redress, and they legitimate and provide credibility for claims for
governmental assistance (funds for schools, hospitals, health services, Housing, jobs, etc.) and political representation (end quote).

Yanow believes that we need to rethink and reframe racial and ethnic categories, but points out that the process won't be easy.

However, a weakness of Yanow's book for politicians is that she avoids devising any new categories that might eliminate some of the abuses of the widely accepted five category system presently used on government forms (e.g., White, Black, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific Islander, and American Indian-Alaskan Native). Yanow's book would have been complemented by recent sociological research on how Italian Americans were once considered as Non-White, but eventually became White (see Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno, Are Italians White? How Race is Made in America, Routledge Publishers, 2003). Not widely known in academia or the media is that 600,000 Americans of Italian-American descent were forced to carry identification cards during World War II, were restricted from freedom of movement, 10,000 were forced to relocate, and even baseball hero Joe DiMaggio's mother was deported to Italy (see Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II, Heyday Books, 2001). How did Italian-American immigrants assimilate without all the redistribution programs of today even though many were identifiably different by skin color and other physical attributes? How did Italian Americans avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades so many groups that immigrate to the United States today? Why haven't Italian Americans come forward with claims for special treatment under Affirmative Action programs? Perhaps the reason that the Italian-Americans have been largely ignored is that their story contradicts the victimology paradigm prevalent in most of academia and enshrined in government programs.

Yanow's book is a nuanced and balanced contribution and, as such, perhaps does not lend itself to being used as ammunition for the proponents or the opponents of perpetuating the current racial and ethnic categories. Says Yanow:

(quote) I am convinced that we must stop giving accounts of ourselves in terms of the five gross, lumpy race-ethnic categories (White, Black, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific Islander, American Indian-Alaskan Native): they create, impose, and maintain identities that are, by and large, not embracing of individuals' lived experiences and, because of the baggage of meaning that they carry, detrimental to human dignity. And yet, as convinced as I am of that position, I am equally convinced of the fact that we need modes of storytelling for collective and individual identity purposes, including a story of national origins (end quote).

Dvora Yanow's book contains some interesting quotes at the beginning of each chapter. It is perhaps fitting that we close this book review with the following excerpted quote from a noted Black scholar:

(quote) The mistake is to assume that birth
certificates and biographical sketches and all the
other documents generated by the modern bureaucratic
state reveal an anterior truth - that they are merely
signs of an independent existing identity.
But in fact they constitute it.
The social meaning of race is established
By these identity papers - by certificates...
And all the other verbal artifacts that proclaim race
to be real and, by that proclamation, make it so (end).
--- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Students of Pennsylvania politics and legislative systems will find the surveys and their analysis that were compiled in researching this book as extremely valuable. This book is highly recommended.
An interesting observation this author makes is how the legislature has become more ideologically divisive. In previous studies from the 1950s, legislative elections were fought over few issues and legislative matters seldom reached "liberal/conservative" perspective splits. Today, legislative matters are considered far more partisan.
The book provides a historical basis for the current Pennsylvania legislature. The Pennsylvania legislature, which began in 1682, is our planet's oldest legislative body. We learn about the composition of the legislative today as opposed to a few decades ago, in terms of qualities such as political party (increasingly Republican), educational achievement (the legislature has become more college educated), and occupation (fewer lawyers lately). Readers further learn about the importance of political party organizations in legislative campaigns (they're important), how legislators spend their time (mostly on constituent matters), and how most legislators think (moderately conservative.)
A critical change in recent decades has been the increased professionalism of the legislature as what was once a part-time body turned into a full-time operation. Interesting, the composition of the legislature in terms of race and gender varied little during this change.

This collection of folk literature is valuable for anyone teaching bilingual Spanish/English literature. It is also very useful for teachers of Spanish language, anthropology , children's literature, and folklore. I am using it in a college level writing class. Stories are printed in both Spanish and English. They are short and well-written, retaining the flavor of the original in the translation.

Berlitz guides are not what you may call heavy-duty full-scale guides. They are cheaper - and also thinner on research, sticking to simpler matters and giving just a quick glance at the area. If you do not have excessive expectations, this book will not disappoint you.

Berlitz Costa Dorada is very good for a holiday-maker who will be spending most of the time on the beach and will keep cultural exploration as a firm second priority. For these travellers, a big and substantial guide (such as any thick book covering Catalonia) would not represent ideal value for money.

I found most details accurate and writing readable if uninspired. Again, you cannot judge this book by applying standards of a full-budget travel guide. Photographs are good, and some descriptions are in fact very honest compared to bigger brothers who often try to be too vague trying not to offend anyone.

Library Journal's review of this guide: "Combining encyclopedic coverage of destinations with loads of practical information and atlas- type maps, the series illuminates the wonders of nature but emphasizes the peculiarity of a place's people and their folklore."

I'm glad that I read this book. My family and I are considering living in Costa Rica.

This book will help us understand Costa Rican culture so we can have a positive experience in Costa Rica.