Meetings with remarkable activists since the 1960sAmerican social change movements dominated the 1960s and 1970s, an era brought about and influenced not by a handful of celebrity activists but by people who cared. These history makers together transformed the political and spiritual landscape of America and laid the foundation for many of the social movements that exist today.Through a series of 43 vignettes—tight biographical sketches of the characters an...

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics."I come to you from a place where the earth is pink”—thus Chellis Glendinning begins her warm evocation of place, the place in New Mexico where she lives, the particular spots on the map where other people have learned to set their roots, connect with the land, and live their lives in effective harmony with their surroundings. She cont...

American Book Award Winner: A “moving, intimate” account of serving as a translator for undocumented children facing deportation (The New York Times Book Review). Nonfiction Finalist for the Kirkus PrizeFinalist for National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Structured around the forty questions volunteer worker Valeria Luiselli translates from a court system form and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends humanizes these young migrants and ...

Dispatches from Arizona—the front line of a massive human migration—including the voices of migrants, Border Patrol, ranchers, activists, and othersFor the last decade, Margaret Regan has reported on the escalating chaos along the Arizona-Mexico border, ground zero for immigration since 2000. Undocumented migrants cross into Arizona in overwhelming numbers, a state whose anti-immigrant laws are the most stringent in the nation. And Arizona has the highest number of...

Occupying the eastern two-thirds of island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic has something for almost everyone – except perhaps obsessive perfectionists. If you can relax and go with the flow you will experience a land of great environmental diversity with a rich and varied culture, a turbulent history, some infuriating idiosyncrasies, and a people whose friendliness is legendary. The Dominicans are flamboyant, irrepressible, generous, headstrong, and resilient. Their culture is a dist...

Carol Merchasin first visited San Miguel de Allende in 2005, fell in love with its language, people, and culture, and moved there full-time with her husband shortly thereafter. A lawyer by training, Merchasin is curious about how everything around her in Mexico works—the health care system, religious rituals, loaning money, small change at the market, narcotrafficantes, telenovelas, and the subtleties between the verbs ser and estar. An intrepid researcher, she informally consults her neig...

"Why is everyone so quiet? Is this the democracy you wanted?" So ask the Zapatistas, the group of indigenous Mexicans who, on January 1, 1994, mounted a rebellion against the implementation of NAFTA, political corruption, and the slow, unreported genocide of indigenous people worldwide. As the group expressed their demands and revealed their tactics, it quickly became obvious that they were less an armed guerilla force seeking to seize state power, and much more a social movement seeking t...

Ernesto Guevara aka El Che: A Very Short IntroductionThe Bolivian authorities wanted to cut his head off and send it to Cuba to verify his identity, or just to send a message; after an exhaustive debate, they amputated his hands at the wrist instead and shipped them in a very special container to La Paz, Bolivia; his body was injected with a heavy dose of formalin for preservation, it lay on the autopsy room which was no valhalla; just a squalid room of a school with a military-typ...

There is a part of Mexico, the west-central area encompassing the state of Jalisco and its capital, Guadalajara, which is the cradle of many significant cultural traditions that most of us associate with that great country: mariachi music, tequila and charreada (rodeos) to name a few. And Jalisco is Michael Hogan's intellectual inspiration for this bird's eye view of Mexico and elsewhere.Hogan writes with deep affection for his adopted country, mixed with an insider's keen interest ...

Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and suc...

A brilliantly illuminating portrait of the twenty-first-century West—a book as vast, diverse, and unexpected as the land and the people, from one of our foremost chroniclers of migrationThe economic boom—and the devastation left in its wake—has been writ nowhere as large as on the West, the most iconic of American landscapes. Over the last decade the West has undergone a political and demographic upheaval comparable only to the opening of the frontier. Now, in D...

An American who cannot afford to live in his own house escapes to Panamá. Finds himself in Heaven - a beautiful land with wonderful people - but finds corrosive civilization coming ever nearer this fragile alien world.In this travel memoir, novelist James David Audlin tells of his adventures in one of the world's last frontier lands. Here one still sees Ngäbe Buglé people, in their bare feet and traditional finery, walking through the village as if they are visiting from another pl...