A study of Mexico - political, social, cultural, economic - by a journalist who was for the past 6 years the NYT bureau chief in Mexico City. With portraits of Mexico's top leaders, about a nation whose stability is vital to our national well-being.

Experience the passion and drama of the world's greatest operas with this sumptuously illustrated visual guide.Immerse yourself in more than 75 years of the world's most celebrated operas and discover the fascinating stories behind them. Explore the lives of opera singers, such as Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, and Jonas Kaufmann. Meet composers such as Mozart, Wagner, and Britten, and the librettists with whom they collaborated to create the magical blends of wo...

Unravel the history, themes, and language of Shakespeare's plays, poems, and sonnets with this beautifully illustrated guide to his life and works.Comedy and romance, history, and tragedy, Shakespeare's canon has it all. Some 400 years after they were written and first performed, his works remain fresh and relevant today.Shakespeare: His Life and Works is an accessible and lavishly illustrated celebration of the Bard himself and his 39 plays, great sonnets,...

Unravel the history, themes, and language of Shakespeare's plays, poems, and sonnets with this beautiful guide to his life and works. Comedy and romance, history, and tragedy, Shakespeare's canon has it all. Some 400 years after they were written and first performed, his works remain fresh and relevant today. Shakespeare: his life and works is an accessible and lavish celebration of the Bard himself and his 39 plays, great sonnets, and narrative poems. Themes, plots, characters, and langua...

Immerse yourself in more than 400 years of the world's most celebrated operas and discover the fascinating stories behind them. Explore the lives of singers such as Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, and Jonas Kaufmann. Meet composers like Mozart, Wagner, and Britten, and the librettists with whom they collaborated to create the magical blend of words and music that make up opera.From its origins in the 17th-century courts of Italy to live screenings in public spaces today, Opera: Th...

The Lost Child of Philomena Lee is the tale of a mother and a son whose lives were scarred by the forces of hypocrisy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the secrets they were forced to keep. A compelling narrative of human love and loss, Martin Sixsmith's moving account is both heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive.When she fell pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to the convent at Roscrea in Co. Tipperary to be looked aft...

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five cen...

Fernando Henrique Cardoso received a phone call in the middle of the night asking him to be the new Finance Minister of Brazil. As he put the phone down and stared into the darkness of his hotel room, he feared he'd been handed a political death sentence. The year was 1993, and he would be responsible for an economy that had had seven different currencies in the previous eight years to cope with inflation that had run at 3000 percent a year. Brazil had a habit of chewing up finance ministe...

Host of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, the fifth largest country in the world is the perfect topic for the next title in the Short History seriesDiscovered by Portuguese sailor and explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral more than 500 years ago, Brazil's history since then has been turbulent, blighted by rebellion, cruelty, dictatorship, and poverty. But, it is also a vibrant, exciting, and ethnically diverse nation that has, in the face of great adversity, emerge...

The fascinating Bolivian president Evo Morales is vying with the brash and provocative leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, to be the most influential figure in South American politics today. Since coming into office four years ago, Morales has been intensely critical of the United States, speaking out against the drug war at the United Nations and implementing socialist programs at home, including the nationalization of British Petroleum holdings and other foreign investments. And he has rea...

Fidel Castro described Salvador Allende’s democratic election as president of Chile in 1970 as the most important revolutionary triumph in Latin America after the Cuban revolution. Yet celebrations were short lived. In Washington, the Nixon administration vowed to destroy Allende’s left-wing government while Chilean opposition forces mobilized against him. The result was a battle for Chile that ended in 1973 with a right-wing military coup and a brutal dictatorship lasting nearly twenty ye...

The second edition of this accessible study of Mexico includes two new features: an examination of cultural developments since Independence from Spain in 1821 and a discussion of contemporary issues up to the time of publication. Several new plates with captions expand the thematic coverage in the book. The updated edition examines the administration of Vicente Fox, who came to power with the elections of 2000. The new sections reinforce the importance of Mexico's long and disparate histor...