South America Books

Andres:

Acabo de terminar tu libro, y la verdad me parecio muy bueno. En parte, siento que yo tambien atravese Latinoamerica en bicicleta (las subidas fueron durisimas), me parece que la proxima vez la voy a ser en moto!!

Cuando compre el libro, lo imagine como una una guia, una extensión de infobiker.com, donde me serviria para recaudar información acerca de mis futuros viajes por territorios inhospitos. Fue eso y mucho mas. Tu narrrativa es amena, colorida, donde varias veces tuve que interrumpir la lectura para largar una carcajada, ante la mirada incredula de mi esposa e hijos. Pero lo que mas rescato de tu libro es el analisis politico, historico y social de un continente injustamente abatido por el pais que ahora casualmente me da albergue.

Tambien, tu libro es una alternativa a las cronicas de viajeros comerciales, que abundan por esta zona, donde el narrador se limita contar sin mucha agilidad literaria sus peripecias y su analisis obtuso del entorno latinoamericano.

Bueno, me pediste mis comentarios y ahi estan. Quizas un poco subjetivos porque comparto tu ideas politicas y tus sentimientos hacia la revolución cubana aunque la incoherencia de vivir en el imperio no lo demuestre.

Un abrazo

Facundo

Rarely do I find a review book of any kind who's opinions aren't rehashed brochures or you feel like the reviewer was paid off. Everything is always stunning, spectacular and amazing!

"America's Favorite Inns, B&Bs, & Small Hotels" series of review books have never let me down in giving honest and informative advice. They solicite real reviews from thier readers and have no hesitation in including "bad comments".

I've stayed at numerous inns and small hotels listed in this book over the years and each have been truly remarkable. From the Manor House (now under new ownership) in Cape May with their delightful cookie fairy and inn keepers who went above and beyond the call of duty, to a tiny (by today's standards) hotel in Norfolk that had charm I thought was lost. Our supper comfy room had a view of the water and overlooked a small jazz club that we got to listen to if we left our windows open.

I've bought each edition as it's come out. I sit down and read it from beginning to end, marking all those that sound interesting and worth a visit. I can't wait for another "discovery".

I travel on business twice a month and I always stay at the places America's Favorite Inns, B&Bs and small hotels recommends. This is by far the best resource for elegant and unique places to stay. I have used these resources for the last five years and have never been disappointed in the recommendations. I highly recommend this series to anyone who seeks lodgings that are comfortable, elegant and personable.

This book provides basic information about the Gilded Age. Although not in as much detail as some other books on the topic (e.g. America in the Gilded Age, The New Commonwealth), it covers all of the major events. It is very easy to read and contains photographs. At the end of each chapter (divided by years) are primary source documents, which are a nice addition not found in the other books I mentioned.

Archibald Rutledge's tales combined by Jim Casada is a must read for all nostalgic turkey hunters. His tales of the sheer numbers of turkeys in the early 1900's in South Carolina will make even the stongest turkey hunter's heart beat faster. What I would give to have been with him on some of the peaceful days on his plantation hunting the majestic wild turkey. Rutledge got personable with his turkeys, giving them names and hunting them like he was on a mission. He saw turkeys and turkey hunting from a remarkable viewpoint over many decades. No turkey hunter will regret reading this one, and many will file these stories in their memory forever.

An interesting biography of a man dedicated to the agricultural independence of the West. I also enjoyed reading about the details of dam building coupled with the sacrifice of the workers to acomplish these magnificent feats of engineering. Reading about the life and hardships of the workers on Hoover Dam, during the Great Depression, was very educational. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a good biography or learn about the engineering challenges of dam building.

Battered and broken, the bodies, the beings in Oswaldo Guayasamin's paintings don't rest on walls or canvas. They cry and scream out to you in shrieking voices that only physical torture can bring about. Or they weep quietly on the bloody ground. Too exhaused to cry out. They disappear inside themselves in the sorts of emotional trauma that all too many have known, and all too many others have ignored.

That's what happens when I open this book. I'd never heard of Oswaldo two years ago but I stumbled across this book in the library and ended up checking it out a bunch of times until I finally gave in and bought it. I'm tempted to say his paintings have a texture all their own, but I don't know that for sure. Maybe someone else out there gets this sort of texture, too. Some of these paintings seem to be somewhere between sand painting and ancient cave painting. Others look like they were painted out of wood and blood and bone, but with a topical concern that crushes you in the weight of the horrors these people have witnessed, suffered, or inflicted upon others. They oftentimes don't even seem to be people. It's as if we're seeing emaciated, bipedal, spectral cousins. Not apes, but not human. The way their captors and killers must have seen them.

This book entwines poems from Pablo Neruda's Canto General, 50th Anniversary Edition (Latin American Literature and Culture, 7) with paintings from throughout Oswaldo's career. Oswaldo has some of the most viscerally emotional paintings I've ever seen. As much as the poems add to the feel of the book, you wouldn't need any words to know that wherever these paintings came from, there was suffering, brutality and desperation behind them. I'd spent over an hour looking at it before I ever read any of the poems, and even now it's the paintings first and foremost that draw me back to america, my brother, my blood. Still, there's no denying the symbiosis. It's as if you hold a Neruda poem in front of a mirror but the reflection is a Guayasamin painting.

I'm a little miffed at society because nowhere along the way before 2006 or early 2007 did I stumble upon anyone who pointed Oswaldo out to me as someone I shouldn't overlook. It's very similar to the way I felt after first reading Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan. Hopefully my review will lead someone else to this giant teller of the human story.

All the best pictures are inside. Don't disregard this book because of a 3-inch picture of the cover on a website. Art/books like this are why "better late than never" is a much-loved cliche.

This beautiful book was published in conjunction with the exhibit of the same name which was on view at the Bavarian State Library in Munich, Germany, from 10 April to 27 June 1992. It has 92 full color illustrations, 96 duotone illustrations, along with text by some of the world's foremost scholars of 16th century cartography.

Included is the oldest surviving map of America, drawn by Juan de la Cosa in 1500; Gerardus Mercator's 1569 world map, which was the first to use parallel lines of latitude and longitude, plus dozens of others. Indexed and bibliographed.

Whereas, Alexis de Tocqueville offers his perspective on America as an outside observer, the literary genius James Fenimore Cooper offers his assessment of culture, politics and society in 19th century America. He doesn't hold democracy to be sacrosanct like we do today, but rather like any other system of government with its advantages and disadvantages. His look at the nature of liberty and its relation with equality is particularly intriguing.

He is cognizant of the dangers posed to American self-government, which values legal equality. Equality, is a virtue, only insofar as it pertains to equal rights and equality before the law. Any effort at establishing equality of outcome is tantamount to tyranny and opposed to liberty. Cooper illustrates the precarious relationship between liberty and equality. Unless, tradition, custom, the rule of law and the Constitution are revered and upheld- the American Polity could easily collapse into majoritarian tyranny under a demagogue.

One gains an appreciation of the system of government established by the American founding fathers after reading this book... They established a constitutionally-limited federal republic, with limits not only on the power of government, but with limits placed on the power of majority rule, so as to limit the fundamental role of government to protecting the rights of its citizens. This constitutional republic sought to balance out monarchial, democratic, and aristocratic elements...

José E. Limón explores what he calls the "conflicted yet enamoured" relations between Greater Mexico and the United States through a series of encounters - real and imagined - between Mexicans, including Mexican Americans, and Anglos.

Limón sets the scene with a surprising, original comparison of Mexico and the U.S. South. Both were based on agricultural economies, slow to industrialize, poor, and defeated in major wars. The winners stigmatized the losers as culturally inferior. But the artists and intellectuals of both the U.S. South and Greater Mexico reversed the negative stereotypes assigned them. The "losers" didn't see themselves as degraded, but rather "projected a profoundly eroticized and affirming vision of their cultures as more bodily intense, inherently `artistic,' and sensuously spiritual." How these images change over time, who is doing the changing and for what purposes, are themes of this complicated, rewarding book.

Going to the movies with Dr. Limón suggests that, at least on the big screen, we've come a long way. In 1953, High Noon presented a strong, ethical and morally superior Helen Ramirez, a woman loved and desired by the sheriff Will Kane, but to whom he lacks the moral courage to commit himself. Helen Ramirez, as town madam, is politically and economically a step above the sexy "señoritas" Anglo cowboys lusted after in popular culture, but still marginalized, stigmatized, and relegated to what we now call "the sex industry." The 1956 movie Giant gave us the serious Juana, who is not defined by her sexuality, but by her work and seriousness of purpose. Juana does not suffer from forbidden love, but marries Jordy Benedict, son of the wealthy ranchowners Leslie and Bick Benedict. Juana and Jordy have a son who will be a leader in the emerging, more equal Texas. By 1995, Lone Star showed the smart, well-educated and sexy schoolteacher Pilar and her Mexican-American community politically ascendant in their community. Pilar romantically encounters her old flame, Sam, the soon-to-be-former Anglo sheriff, as his complete equal.

"We do our best political work," asserts writer Anne Finger, "at the place where hurt and questioning come together." We could hardly find better proof than in Limón's discussion of Katherine Anne Porter's short story "Noon Wine." Porter, a writer who Limón clearly admires, grew up in Central Texas and was drawn throughout her life to Mexico and Mexicans. But in her fiction set in Central Texas, she completely ignored her Mexican American neighbors. Why?

The easiest answer is that Katherine Anne Porter, while a great writer, was poisoned by the racism of her time and place. Limón takes this possibility seriously, but is not a man who ever settles for the obvious. Pushing beyond the surface, he wrestles to find another solution to Porter's painful omission. Limón's struggle, while poignant, yields an answer that may or may not convince you. What is admirable is Limón's almost overwhelming generosity of spirit. He wants to give Porter every benefit of the doubt. Applying the same quality of devotion with which he restored the unpublished fiction of Jovita Gonzalez, Limón now attempts to restore Porter's actual, but unrealized (perhaps unconscious) intentions to portray Mexican Americans sympathetically and respectfully. The world would be a much different place if we gave one another a thimbleful of such attention: listening for the best, trying to understand (though not to excuse) even the most hurtful failings.

Gustavo Perez Firmat (on the book's back cover) promises that "Limón writes with passion and precision." That promise is more than fulfilled in Limón's discussion of Manuel Gamio. Limón defends Gamio, a Mexican anthropologist, intellectual and activist, against recent rather blunt charges of "racism," charges which are either thinly substantiated or not substantiated at all, depending on whom you believe. With great care, Limón insists on getting the facts right, particularly since someone else's moral and intellectual reputation -- someone else's honor -- is at stake.

So what are we Texas Mexicans and Anglos to each other? Family? Partners? Enemies? Friends? John Sayles, whose film Lone Star Limón so much appreciates, mixes metaphors: we are family, at least half-siblings, but we are also once-thwarted lovers who are going to try to make things work out this time, in a landscape of political and cultural equality.

Limón, through most of the book, tends towards the metaphor of marriage, or at least romantic or sexual pairings. He undercuts the marriage metaphor in his last chapter, however, pointing towards a wider range of possibilities for equal, creative, formative, non-repressive and erotically charged relationships. It is not only particular individual Anglos and Mexicans, but our cultures and nations, that Limón hopes will "encounter" one another in equality, respect and pleasure.

Reading American Encounters, I often felt like an inexperienced trailrider following a skilled horseman. The beginning was rough. Our guide seemed to have forgotten that not every rider can make her way through thickets (of literary criticism, psychoanalytic theory and cultural studies) that he negotiates gracefully. My head almost got lopped off a few times by low-hanging branches with names like Russell Jacoby, Herbert Marcuse, and Raymond Williams. Other moments provided a lovely, comfortable gallop across familiar territory made intriguingly new by Limón's observations. Then he picked up speed again. Irrationally, I crouched lower; dangerously, I dropped the reins. All I could do was hang on for dear life, grabbing fistfulls of mane. I yelled to our guide -- Slow down! Come back, Dr. Limón! Help! -- but he was much too far ahead to hear. I survived. Exhilarated by the end of the ride, which took me further and faster than I would have dared go on my own, I'm left with plenty of questions. The most pressing is: When can we ride again?

Like many worthy relationships, this book is complicated and a tad on the high-maintenance side. But it's worth the effort. Limón is never predictable and always provocative. This eloquent, vulnerable, passionate and brilliant book is a delight even when (perhaps especially when) you find yourself arguing with its author. Enjoy.