At the end of each visit, photographer and family collaborated on a remarkable portrait of the family members outside their home, surrounded by all of their possessions—a few jars and jugs for some, an explosion of electronic gadgetry for others. Vividly portraying the look and feel of the human condition everywhere on Earth, this internationally acclaimed bestseller puts a human face on the issues of population, environment, social justice, and consumption as it illuminates the crucial question facing our species today: Can all six billion of us have all the things we want?

    This second edition builds upon and updates Omi and Winant's groundbreaking research. In addition to a preface to the new edition, the book provides a more detailed account of the theory of racial formation processes. It includes material on the historical development of race, the question of racism, race-class-gender interrelationships, and everyday life. A final chapter updates the developments in American racial politics up to the present, focusing on such key events as the 1992 Presidential election, the Los Angeles riots, and the Clinton administration's racial politics and policies."…required reading for scholars engaged in historical, sociological, and cultural studies of race. In the new edition, the authors further develop their provocative theory of 'racial formation' and extend their political analyses into the 1990s. They introduce the concept of 'racial project', linking race as representation with race as it is embedded in the social structure." -- Angela Y. Davis

    Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics--as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies. Illustrations.

    From an American Book Award-winning author comes a pungent and poignant masterpiece of recollection that ushers readers into a now-vanished "colored" world and extends and deepens our sense of African-American history, even as it entrances us with its bravura storytelling.

    It includes complete descriptions of each sign, plus full-torso illustrations. There is also a subject index for easy reference as well as alternate signs for the same meaning.

    With countries such as China and India taking on a more significant role in the global business landscape, you can't afford not to know the practices, customs, and philosophies of other countries.Now fully revised, updated, and expanded with over sixty country profiles, Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands, 2nd Edition provides invaluable information on how to handle common business interactions with grace, respect, and an appreciation for different cultures.

    The book 'multiculturalizes' media studies by looking at Hollywood movie genres such as the western, the musical and the imperial film from multicultural perspectives, examining issues from the racial politics of casting to colonialist discourse and gender and Empire.More than just a critique of Eurocentrism and racism, Unthinking Eurocentrism also confirms artistic, cultural and political alternatives, discussing a wide range of non-Eurocentric media including Third World films, rap video and indigenous media. Synthesising literary theory, meida theory and cultural studies to form a challenging interdisciplinary study, the authors argue that current debatess about Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism are merely surface manifestations of a deep-rooted shift: the decolonisation of global culture.

    Shows how the Sixties counterculture changed America and its view of Christianity forever, and explores various ways for believers to influence our world today.

    Examining more than 300 such places, this book discusses topics such as how they were created, who discovered them, why they evoke such feelings of awe and wonder, and - in some cases - whether they do in fact exist.

    The author argues that this conceptual reorientation from the previously accepted "Northern" and "Southern" was a work of cultural construction and intellectual artifice created by the philosophes of the Enlightenment. He shows how the philosophers viewed the continent from the perspective of Paris and deliberately cultivated an idea of the backwardness of "Eastern Europe" the more readily to affirm the importance of "Western Europe".

    Epstein and Robert L. Axtell approach this age-old question with cutting-edge computer simulation techniques. Such fundamental collective behaviors as group formation, cultural transmission, combat, and trade are seen to "emerge" from the interaction of individual agents following simple local rules.In their computer model, Epstein and Axtell begin the development of a "bottom up" social science. Their program, named Sugarscape, simulates the behavior of artificial people (agents) located on a landscape of a generalized resource (sugar). Agents are born onto the Sugarscape with a vision, a metabolism, a speed, and other genetic attributes. Their movement is governed by a simple local rule: "look around as far as you can; find the spot with the most sugar; go there and eat the sugar." Every time an agent moves, it burns sugar at an amount equal to its metabolic rate. Agents die if and when they burn up all their sugar. A remarkable range of social phenomena emerge. For example, when seasons are introduced, migration and hibernation can be observed. Agents are accumulating sugar at all times, so there is always a distribution of wealth.Next, Epstein and Axtell attempt to grow a "proto-history" of civilization. It starts with agents scattered about a twin-peaked landscape; over time, there is self-organization into spatially segregated and culturally distinct "tribes" centered on the peaks of the Sugarscape. Population growth forces each tribe to disperse into the sugar lowlands between the mountains. There, the two tribes interact, engaging in combat and competing for cultural dominance, to produce complex social histories with violent expansionist phases, peaceful periods, and so on. The proto-history combines a number of ingredients, each of which generates insights of its own. One of these ingredients is sexual reproduction. In some runs, the population becomes thin, birth rates fall, and the population can crash. Alternatively, the agents may over-populate their environment, driving it into ecological collapse.When Epstein and Axtell introduce a second resource (spice) to the Sugarscape and allow the agents to trade, an economic market emerges. The introduction of pollution resulting from resource-mining permits the study of economic markets in the presence of environmental factors.This study is part of the 2050 Project, a joint venture of the Santa Fe Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution. The project is an international effort to identify conditions for a sustainable global system in the middle of the next century and to design policy actions to help achieve such a system.

    It was within this project that we came to realize that the notion of human psychology was and remains an African invention...In this book, Na'im Akbar provides the reader with a clear and concise understanding of the African (Kemetic) origins of psychology, and provides the insightful guidelines to modern-day implications and applications of the field. From foreword by Wade W. Nobles

    It shows how to overcome the atomistic and narrowly human-centered approaches which have dominated European thought for four centuries. In this readable introduction to his work, Andrew Collier expounds and defends the main concepts of Bhaskar’s philosophy.The first part of this book looks at the philosophy of experimental science and discusses the stratification of nature, showing how biological structures are founded on chemical ones yet are not reducible to them. This paves the way, in part two, for a discussion of the human sciences which demonstrates that the world they study is also rooted in and emergent from nature. Bhaskar’s concept of an “explanatory critique” (an explanation that is also a criticism, not in addition to, but by virtue of, its explanatory work) is discussed at length as a key concept for ethics and politics. Collier concludes by looking at the uses to which critical realism has been put in clarifying disputes within the human sciences with particular reference to linguistics, psychoanalysis, economics and politics.

    Young Shi Nomura was among the 120,000 American citizens who lost everything when he was sent by the U.S. government to Manzanar, an interment camp in the California desert, simply because he was of Japanese ancestry. "In clear and fascinating prose, Stanley has set forth the compelling story of one of America's darkest times--the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.  His meticulously researched volume is accompanied by numerous, fine period black-and-white photographs...This eloquent account of the disastrous results of racial prejudice stands as a reminder to us in today's pluralistic society." --School Library Journal (starred)

    The development apparatus generated categories powerful enough to shape the thinking even of its occasional critics while poverty and hunger became widespread. Development was not even partially deconstructed until the 1980s, when new tools for analyzing the representation of social reality were applied to specific Third World cases. Here Escobar deploys these new techniques in a provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general, concluding with a discussion of alternative visions for a postdevelopment era.Escobar emphasizes the role of economists in development discourse--his case study of Colombia demonstrates that the economization of food resulted in ambitious plans, and more hunger. To depict the production of knowledge and power in other development fields, the author shows how peasants, women, and nature became objects of knowledge and targets of power under the gaze of experts.

    A. Hayek. Economist, social and political theorist, and intellectual historian, Hayek passionately championed individual liberty and condemned the dangers of state control. Now Hayek at last tells the story of his long and controversial career, during which his fortunes rose, fell, and finally rose again.Through a complete collection of previously unpublished autobiographical sketches and a wide selection of interviews, Hayek on Hayek provides the first detailed chronology of Hayek's early life and education, his intellectual progress, and the academic and public reception of his ideas. His discussions range from economic methodology and the question of religious faith to the atmosphere of post-World War I Vienna and the British character.Born in 1899 into a Viennese family of academics and civil servants, Hayek was educated at the University of Vienna, fought in the Great War, and later moved to London, where, as he watched liberty vanish under fascism and communism across Europe, he wrote The Road to Serfdom. Although this book attracted great public attention, Hayek was ignored by other economists for thirty years after World War II, when European social democracies boomed and Keynesianism became the dominant intellectual force. However, the award of the Nobel Prize in economics for 1974 signaled a reversal in Hayek's fortunes, and before his death in 1992 he saw his life's work vindicated in the collapse of the planned economies of Eastern Europe.Hayek on Hayek is as close to an autobiography of Hayek as we will ever have. In his own eloquent words, Hayek reveals the remarkable life of a revolutionary thinker in revolutionary times."One of the great thinkers of our age who explored the promise and contours of liberty....[Hayek] revolutionized the world's intellectual and political life"—President George Bush, on awarding F. A. Hayek the Medal of FreedomF. A. Hayek, recipient of the Medal of Freedom 1991 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, was a pioneer in monetary theory and the principal proponent of the libertarian philosophy. Hayek is the author of numerous books in economics, as well as books in political philosophy and psychology.

    Endless growth can make a candyfloss economy, and capitalism must be its own sternest critic. Handy reaches here for a philosophy beyond the mechanics of business organisations, beyond material choices, to try and establish an alternative universe where the work ethics can contain a natural sense of continuity, connections and a sense of direction. We are now a world of shareholders, but everyone has a stake in the future. With warmth, wit and the most challenging insights, Charles Handy seeks to turn paradox into real progress.

    He shows how writers proceed to comfort and fluency by detailing strategies, rules, and turning points for a diversity of writers--professional, professorial, and otherwise. The result is a thorough-going discussion of what helps writers and a review of the broad literature that program participants found most helpful.

    It also aims to discuss the principal features of Indo-European linguistics. Greek and Latin are studied as a pair for cultural reasons only; as languages, they have little in common apart from their Indo-European heritage. Thus the only way to treat the historical bases for their development is to begin with Proto-Indo-European. The only way to make a reconstructed language like Proto-Indo-European intelligible and intellectually defensible is to present at least some of the basis for reconstructing its features and, in the process, to discuss reasoning and methodology of reconstruction (including a weighing of alternative reconstructions). The result is a compendious handbook of Indo-European phonology and morphology, and a vade mecum of Indo-European linguistics--the focus always remaining on Greek and Latin. The non-classical sources for historical discussion are mainly Vedic Sanskrit, Hittite, and Germanic, with occasional but crucial contributions from Old Irish, Avestan, Baltic, and Slavic.

    In this edition, many details have been updated to reflect the latest finds from ongoing research, including new material about the sexual side of antidepressants.

    Some critics have explained the failure of social programs by citing our tradition of individual freedom and libertarian values, while others point to weaknesses within the working class. In The Color of Welfare, Jill Quadagno takes exception to these claims, placing race at the center of the American Dilemma, as Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal did half a century ago. The American creed of liberty, justice, and equality clashed with a history of active racial discrimination, says Quadagno. It is racism that has undermined the War on Poverty, and America must come to terms with this history if there is to be any hope of addressing welfare reform today. From Reconstruction to Lyndon Johnson and beyond, Quadagno reveals how American social policy has continually foundered on issues of race. Drawing on extensive primary research, Quadagno shows, for instance, how Roosevelt, in need of support from southern congressmen, excluded African Americans from the core programs of the Social Security Act. Turning to Lyndon Johnson's unconditional war on poverty, she contends that though anti-poverty programs for job training, community action, health care, housing, and education have accomplished much, they have not been fully realized because they became inextricably intertwined with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which triggered a white backlash. Job training programs, for instance, became affirmative action programs, programs to improve housing became programs to integrate housing, programs that began as community action to upgrade the quality of life in the cities were taken over by local civil rights groups. This shift of emphasis eventually alienated white, working-class Americans, who had some of the same needs--for health care, subsidized housing, and job training opportunities--but who got very little from these programs. At the same time, affirmative action clashed openly with organized labor, and equal housing raised protests from the white suburban middle-class, who didn't want their neighborhoods integrated. Quadagno shows that Nixon, who initially supported many of Johnson's programs, eventually caught on that the white middle class was disenchanted. He realized that his grand plan for welfare reform, the Family Assistance Plan, threatened to undermine wages in the South and alienate the Republican party's new constituency--white, southern Democrats--and therefore dropped it. In the 1960s, the United States embarked on a journey to resolve the American dilemma. Yet instead of finally instituting full democratic rights for all its citizens, the policies enacted in that turbulent decade failed dismally. The Color of Welfare reveals the root cause of this failure--the inability to address racial inequality.

    Essays by Hyun Yi Kang, Elaine H. Kim, Lisa Lowe, Shelley Sunn Wong, and artwork by Yong Soon Min.

    It has averaged 1700 copies a month for years, and sales are actually increasing.Noah Chomsky has been hailed by the New York Times as "arguably the most important intellectual alive". In this third volume in a series of illuminating interviews, Chomsky discusses why the U.S. is more violent than other countries, how our claim to be a democracy is defective, and what "democracy" actually describes in the real world.

    Earl Ofari Hutchinson offers a searing, controversial indictment of our society’s attitudes toward black men.The black male image, he argues, has been battered, maligned, and assaulted by academics, the press, and Hollywood, as well as by some black rappers, comedians, feminists, filmmakers, and novelists—many of whom he accuses of reinforcing, and profiting from, ethnic and sexual stereotypes. Offering both a wide historical perspective and acute insights into such racially charged events as the O. J. Simpson trial, the Clarence Thomas hearings, and the Million Man March, Hutchinson brilliantly counters the image of the black male as a figure entrenched in crime, drugs, and violence. At the same time, he issues a deeply moving call to rethink the way we view African American men.

    It emphasizes on development-in-context and on the nature and sources of diversity.

    Since that time, inborn dispositions have fallen in and out of favor. Based on fifteen years of research, Galen's Prophecy now provides fresh insights into these complex questions, offering startling new evidence to support Galen's ancient classification of melancholic and sanguine adults. Integrating evidence and ideas from biology, philosophy, and psychology, Jerome Kagan examines the implications of the idea of temperament for aggressive behavior, conscience, psychopathology, and the degree to which each of us can be expected to control our deepest emotions.

    Nor was the power they held the result of their own actions; they were installed as the country's rulers by the Soviet army. Yet Polish Communists set out to produce credible claims to authority and legitimacy for their power by reshaping the nation's culture and traditions.Jan Kubik begins his study by demonstrating how the strategy for remodeling the national culture was implemented through extensive use of public ceremonies and displays of symbols by the Gierek regime (1970-1980). He then reconstructs the emergence of the Catholic Church and the organized opposition as viable counter-hegemonic subcultures. Their growing strength opened the way for counter-hegemonic politics, the delegitimization of the regime, the rise of Solidarity, and the collapse of communism.He is not studying politics per se, but rather culture and the subtle and indirect ways power is realized within it, often outside of traditionally defined politics. Kubik's approach, which draws heavily on modern anthropological theory, helps explain why Solidarity happened in Poland and not elsewhere in the Communist bloc.

    Yet few Americans confront the ambiguities of race as regularly as those of biracial descent. In Black, White, Other journalist Lise Funderburg questions 46 biracial Americans about family and love, work and religion, and the mythology surrounding the "tragic mulatto." Her book reveals a great deal about life on both sides of the color line--and exposes just how artificial, how socially constructed, our concept of race is to begin with.

    Arranging entries chronologically and drawing on sources from the Satyricon to Gay News, from Michelangelo&squo;s sonnets to a speech in the House of Lords, from sexually explicit graffiti found in Pompeii to a Playboy interview with David Bowie, Patrick Higgins uses novels, biographies, autobiographies, histories, and ephemera to present gay history as never before.

    Even during a recession the country is in the black. Japan's school system produces a blue-collar work force possessing skills that come only with a college degree in most Western countries. Its pension and health delivery systems are efficient and relatively inexpensive, and its unemployment rate half that of the United States and Germany.

    How could this happen? Didn't his parents know he was so depressed? She was so pretty, such a high achiever—what went wrong?Andrew Slaby, a psychiatrist specializing in depression and crisis intervention, and Lili Garfinkel, a parent educator, shed light on these perplexing questions. They present psychological profiles of eight severely depressed adolescents who either attempted or committed suicide. In reading the teens' journals and talking with their family and friends, they found that the severity of their distress was missed, not because people around them didn't care, but because they didn't know what to look for, what questions to ask, or how to respond effectively. In addition to sharing these families' stories, the authors offer guidelines for recognizing and working with suicidal youth. In alerting readers to the factors that may lead to suicide, this book will literally save lives.

    And it is now also recognized that many if not most of our social, ecological, economical and political problems are essentially of a global, complex and nonlinear nature. And it is now further accepted than any holistic perspective of the human mind and brain can hardly be achieved by any other approach. In this wide-ranging, scholarly but very concise treatment, physicist, computer scientist and philosopher Klaus Mainzer discusses, in essentially nontechnical language, the common framework behind these ideas and challenges. Emphasis is given to the evolution of new structures in natural and cultural systems and we are lead to see clearly how the new integrative approach can give insights not available from traditional reductionistic methods. The fifth edition enlarges and revises almost all sections and supplements an entirely new chapter on the complexity of economic systems. From the reviews of the fourth edition: "This book is ambitious, incredibly erudite with 22 pages of references, and is indisputably clearly and beautifully written and illustrated. It is perfectly suited to a first course on the science of complexity. Even beginners and young graduate students will have something to learn from this book." (Andre Hautot, Physicalia, Vol. 57 (3), 2005) "All-in-all, this highly recommended book is a wonderful resource for intuitive basic ideas in the need of rigorous formulation." (Albert A. Mullin, Zentralblatt MATH, vol. 1046, 2004) "Readers of this book will enjoy Mainzer's exposition, which is based on a tight coupling between classical and historical concepts from Plato and Aristotle to modern, mathematical and physical developments  . Every chapter begins with a section designed to orient the reader to the perspective of philosophical developments through the ages pertinent to the topic at hand.  The author takes pains to point out essential differences between classical science and the science of complexity. Thinking in Complexity is an outstandingly readable book." (Anutosh Moitra, The Industrial Physicist, August/September, 2004)

    Changes in the fundamental sources of energy, and in the use of energy sources, are a basic dimension of the evolution of society. Our appreciation of the significance of these processes is essential to a fuller understanding of world history.Vaclav Smil offers a comprehensive look at the role of energy in world history, ranging from human muscle-power in foraging societies and animal-power in traditional farming to preindustrial hydraulic techniques and modern fossil-fueled civilization. The book combines a vast historical sweep with cross-cultural comparisons and is enhanced by illustrations and accessible quantitative material. Students and general readers alike will gain an understanding of energy's fundamental role in human progress.Smil illuminates the role played by various means of harnessing energy in different societies and provides new insights by explaining the impact and limitations of these fundamental physical inputs—whether it is in the cultivation of crops, smelting of metals, waging of war, or the mass production of goods. While examining the energetic foundations of historical changes, Energy in World History avoids simplistic, deterministic views of energy needs and recognizes the complex interplay of physical and social realities.

    In this first serious work on the theory of civil society to appear in many years, Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato contend that the concept of civil society articulates a contested terrain in the West that could become the primary locus for the expansion of democracy and rights.In this major contribution to contemporary political theory, Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato argue that the concept of civil society articulates a contested terrain in the West that could become a primary locus for the expansion of democracy and rights.

    Augustine to contemporary anthropological and psychoanalytic interpretations.  The various essays discuss the intricate rules of the cockfight, the ethical question of pitting two equally matched roosters in a fight to the death, the emotional involvement of cockfighters and fans, and the sexual implications of the sport.  The result is an enlightening collection for anthropologists, folklorists, sociologists, and psychologists, as well as followers of this ancient blood sport.

    "You won't find anything better, not only for someone who is just beginning to take their dreams seriously, but also for those who find working with dreams a frustrating, baffling affair." - Round Table Review

    Hendrik Spruyt argues that there was nothing inevitable about the rise of the state system, however. Examining the competing institutions that arose during the decline of feudalism--among them urban leagues, independent communes, city states, and sovereign monarchies--Spruyt disposes of the familiar claim that the superior size and war-making ability of the sovereign nation-state made it the natural successor to the feudal system.The author argues that feudalism did not give way to any single successor institution in simple linear fashion. Instead, individuals created a variety of institutional forms, such as the sovereign, territorial state in France, the Hanseatic League, and the Italian city-states, in reaction to a dramatic change in the medieval economic environment. Only in a subsequent selective phase of institutional evolution did sovereign, territorial authority prove to have significant institutional advantages over its rivals. Sovereign authority proved to be more successful in organizing domestic society and structuring external affairs. Spruyt's interdisciplinary approach not only has important implications for change in the state system in our time, but also presents a novel analysis of the general dynamics of institutional change.

    Described by Richard Sennett as a major event in social theory, Postmodern Ethics subverted the pieties of subversion which rule the postmodern imagination, arguing for an ethic of being with the Other, beyond the fashionable imperative of anything goes or the deconstruction of identity through difference.

    This innovative approach to intractable policy controversies shows how "reframing" the issues can succeed where simply appealing to facts often fails.In Frame Reflection, two of his country's leading organizational theorists and policy analysts show how disputes that in abstract debate or negotiation seem insoluble can sometimes be resolved pragmatically by those who actually have to design and implement the specific programs. The authors illustrate their theory through a detailed examination of three specific programs: the evolution of early retirement programs in Germany; a statewide project for the homeless in Massachusetts; and the development of Project Athena, a large-scale experiment in the use of computers in undergraduate education at MIT.Policy stalemates are inevitable. Yet we know that people sometimes do change their minds, even in situations that at first appeared hopeless. How that happens is the subject of this pathbreaking book.

    Obtaining and changing job assignments, buying certain foods and consumer items, getting into good hospitals, buying train tickets, obtaining housing, even doing business-all such tasks call for the skillful and strategic giving of gifts and cultivating of obligation, indebtedness, and reciprocity.Mayfair Mei-hui Yang's close scrutiny of this phenomenon serves as a window to view facets of a much broader and more complex cultural, historical, and political formation. Using rich and varied ethnographic examples of guanxi stemming from her fieldwork in China in the 1980s and 1990s, the author shows how this "gift economy" operates in the larger context of the socialist state redistributive economy.

    An important milestone in the recording of lesbian experience, this is the first book to document the lives of Black lesbians in Britain.

    Essays by Richard McCulloch on a new concept of racial relations that promotes the preservation, independence and legitimate rights and interests of all races, providing a preservationist alternative to the racially destructive consequences of multiracialism.

    The author reveals how the appearance of the automobile was shaped by the social conflicts arising from America's mass production system. He connects the social struggles of American society with the organizational struggles of designers to create symbol-laden substitutes for the American dream. Theoretically sophisticated, lucid and compelling, Auto-Opium will appeal to all interested in the American obsession with the car.

    The universe is blind and aimless, indifferent to us and void of meaning. There are no absolute truths and no objective values. There is no right or wrong way to live, only alternative ways. There is no correct reading of a text or a picture or a dance. God is dead, nihilism reigns. But, Rue adds, nihilism is a truth inconsistent with personal happiness and social coherence. What we need instead is a new myth, a noble lie. Only a noble lie can save us from the psychological and social chaos now threatened by the spread of skepticism about the meaning of life and the universe. In By the Grace of Guile, Loyal Rue offers a wide ranging look at the importance of deception in nature and in human society, concluding with an argument for a noble lie to replace the religious beliefs rejected by modern thought. Most of the book is a provocative apology for deception, illuminating its role in the shaping of history, evolution, personality, and society. Ranging from the Bible and Greek philosophy, to Saint Augustine and Montaigne, to Galileo, Kirkegaard, and Freud, Rue shows that it may be more accurate to describe the history of our culture as a flight from deception than as a quest for truth. He turns then to the natural world to reveal how deception works at every level of life, ranging from plants that mimic dung, carrion, or prey to lure insects that then spread pollen, to a remarkable African insect (Acanthaspis petax) that bedecks itself with dead ants and enters the ant colony undetected to binge at will. Moreover, he points out that psychological research has shown that strategies of deception and self-deception are essential to our personal well-being, that we sometimes shore up our self-esteem by deceptive means, by leaving others in a state of ignorance, by manipulating others into a state of false belief, by suppressing information from consciousness, and by fabricating or distorting our own sense of reality. And he argues that social coherence is achievable only within certain optimal limits of deception--the social fabric would be threatened by an overabundance of lies and false promises, of course, but it would also collapse if everyone were perfectly honest all the time. Finally, he argues that society is caught up in a Kulturkampf with nihilists promoting intellectual and moral relativism and realists defending objective and universal truths. The noble lie, says Rue, would introduce a third voice, one which first agrees with the nihilists that universal myths are pretentious lies, but then insists, against the nihilists, that without such lies humanity cannot survive. The challenge, he concludes, is ultimately an aesthetic one: it remains for the artists, poets, novelists, musicians, filmmakers, and other masters of illusion to seduce us into an embrace with a noble lie. We need a new myth that tells us where we have come from, what our nature is, and how we should live together--a story with the courage and presumption to say how things really are and what really matters.

    Because of the proximity of the neighboring countries, the old traditions of Mexico remain ever close to their hearts even as they embrace a new life in America. As a matter of fact, the first Mexican Americans did not leave their homeland by choice to come to the United States. Instead, the United States went to them. At the end of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848, Mexico was forced to cede territory that is now the southwestern United States, and the roughly 80,000 Mexicans who had been living in this vast territory suddenly found themselves living within U.S. borders. As the Tejanos (Texans of Mexican descent) say, We never crossed a border. The border crossed us.The Mexican American Family Album is the record of generations of Mexicans who made the journey from the old country to a new life in the United States, told in their own words and photographs.Cesar Ch'avez, Richard Rodriguez, Sandra Cisneros, and others profiled here testify to the success that many immigrants found in this country. But there are also stories from families not so famous. Their diary entries, letters, personal remembrances, and photographs culled from family archives, scrapbooks, and newspapers, tell of the hardship of poverty in the old country, of the decision to leave and the difficulties often encountered in crossing the border, of life in El Barrio, of finding work, putting down roots, and the transition from newcomer to Mexican American.Through it all the common thread is a celebration of the Mexican heritage even as the immigrant becomes more and more Americanized. It is that spirit that envelops The Mexican American Family Album--not only as a history of immigration from one country to another, but as a chronicle of the contributions, large and small, made by Mexican Americans. The continuing pride in the culture and traditions of Mexico have enhanced and strengthened their lives in their newly adopted country, and brought new dimensions to the multicultural society of America.The titles in the American Family Albums series tell the multicolored and often heroic stories of American immigrant groups, largely through their own words and pictures. Like any family album or scrapbook, the pages contain many period photographs and other memorabilia. These join with original documents--including selections from diaries, letters, memoirs, and newspapers--to bring the immigrant experience vividly to life.

    The contributors include Barbara Bush, Tom Wolfe, Bette Midler and Billy Joel, among others.