Arriving in Córdoba as a young man in 1088 to learn medicine, Yehuda Halevi is enchanted by a world in which Muslim, Jewish and Christian courtiers share poetry and philosophy in their elegant gardens. Here he falls in love with Deborah, the spirited daughter of his host. In this turbulent world, however, Yehuda also encounters invasions and pirates, book burnings and bandits.Driven by conflict to move from city to city, Yehuda and Deborah are often parted - but always in the hope ...

Folklorist Robert L. Stone presents a rare collection of high-quality documentary photos of the sacred steel guitar musical tradition and the community that supports it. The introductory text and extended photo captions in Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus! Photographs from the Sacred Steel Community offer the reader an intimate view of this unique tradition of passionately played music that is beloved among fans of American roots music and admired by folklorists, ethnomusicologists, ...

Florida is blessed with a semitropical climate, beautiful inland areas, and over a thousand miles of warm seas and sandy beaches. And Floridians are every bit as colorful and diverse as the tropical foliage. The interaction between Florida's people and its environment has created distinctive mixes of traditional life unlike those anywhere else in America.Florida's cultural foundation includes Seminoles, Anglo-Celtic Crackers, African Americans, transplanted northerners, and ethnic ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492—from “a remarkably engaging writer” (The New York Times Book Review).Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the lan...

"A kaleidoscopic homage both personal and historical . . . Kamiya's symphony of San Francisco is a grand pleasure." -New York Times Book ReviewThe bestselling love letter to one of the world's great cities, San Francisco, by a life-long Bay Area resident and co-founder of Salon.Cool, Gray City of Love brings together an exuberant combination of personal history, deeply researched history, in-depth reportin...

“A California classic . . . California, it should be remembered, was very much the wild west, having to wait until 1850 before it could force its way into statehood. so what tamed it? Mr. Starr’s answer is a combination of great men, great ideas and great projects.”—The EconomistFrom the age of exploration to the age of Arnold, the Golden State’s premier historian distills the entire sweep of California’s history into one splendid volume. Kevin Starr cover...

As we approach the twenty-first century, biracialism and biculturalism are becoming increasingly common. Skin color and place of birth are no longer reliable signifiers of one's identity or origin. Simple questions like What are you? and Where are you from? aren't answered--they are discussed.How do you measure someone's race or culture? Half this, quarter that, born here, raised there. What name do you give that? These eighteen essays, joined by a shared sense of duality, address b...

**Winner of the American Book AwardPEN Literary Award FinalistThese essays blending memoir, history, and landscape “will create seismic shifts in readers’ perspectives on race, gender, and nature” as they explore how America’s ideas of ‘race’ have marked its people and the land (BuzzFeed).**Sand and stone are Earth’s fragmented memory. Each of us, too, is a landscape inscribed by memory and loss. One life–defining lesson Lauret Savoy learned as a young girl ...

A masterwork of travel literature and of history: voyaging from Cuba to Jamaica, Puerto Rico to Trinidad, Haiti to Barbados, and islands in between, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of each society, its culture and politics, connecting this region’s common heritage to its fierce grip on the world’s imagination.From the moment Columbus gazed out from the Santa María's deck in 1492 at what he mistook for an island off Asia, the Caribbean...

In this dazzling memoir, Richard Rodriguez reflects on the color brown and the meaning of Hispanics to the life of America today. Rodriguez argues that America has been brown since its inception-since the moment the African and the European met within the Indian eye. But more than simply a book about race, Brown is about America in the broadest sense—a look at what our country is, full of surprising observations by a writer who is a marvelous stylist as well as a trenchant observe...

Though we speak English as a nation, it's no secret that America is far from uniform. Spanish, in particular, has long been touted as the language that will figure into our national future; much has been written about the need to recognize it in our laws and schools.Yet billing America as a bilingual country is a gross misrepresentation. They speak Basque in Nevada, Hindi in San Jose, and Gullah in South Carolina. We speak European, Asian, and Native American languages, as well as ...

Dive deep into the history of The Columbian Exchange anywhere you go: on a plane, on a mountain, in a canoe, under a tree. Or grab a flashlight and read Shmoop under the covers. Shmoop's award-winning US History Guides are now available on your eReader. Shmoop eBooks are like having a trusted, fun, chatty, expert history-tour-guide always by your side, no matter where you are (or how late it is at night).Shmoop US History Guides offer fresh analysis, timelines of important events, brief bios...