Mexican Americans are the fastest growing immigrant population in the U.S. and will continue to be significant contributors to the diverse social fabric of the country. This book examines the Mexican American cultural traditions, families, demographics, political participation, and societal impact. Despite their economic, social, and political struggles in this country, Mexican Americans have always believed in the American Dream. Yet they have retained many of their own cultural traditions while adapting to life in the North, These persistent ties are thoughtfully examined in chapters on the contemporary relations between Mexico and the United States, including the recurrent border problems.

Providing historical background and tracing the journey made by generations of Mexican immigrants, this book emphasizes the post-1965 period of immigration reforms. Material from oral histories, autobiographies, and historical studies allow the reader to see how Mexican immigrants struggle in their everyday lives to achieve the American Dream, both today and tomorrow.

What have English terms such as 'civil society', 'democracy', 'development' or 'nationalism' come to mean in an Indian context and how have their meanings and uses changed over time? Why are they the subjects of so much debate - in their everyday uses as well as amongst scholars? How did a concept such as 'Hinduism' come to be framed, and what does it mean now? What is 'caste'? Does it have quite the same meaning now as in the past? Why is the idea of 'faction' so significant in modern India? Why has the idea of 'empowerment' come to be used so extensively? These are the sorts of questions that are addressed in this book. Keywords for Modern India is modelled after the classic exploration of English culture and society through the study of keywords - words that are 'strong, important and persuasive' - by Raymond Williams. The book, like Williams' Keywords, is not a dictionary or an encyclopaedia. Williams said that his was 'an inquiry into a vocabulary', and Keywords for Modern India presents just such an inquiry into the vocabulary deployed in writing in and about India in the English language - which has long been and is becoming ever more a critically important language in India's culture and society. Exploring the changing uses and contested meanings of common but significant words is a powerful and illuminating way of understanding contemporary India, for scholars and for students, and for general readers.

Contemporary Latin America presents the epochal political, economic, social, and cultural changes in Latin America over the last 40 years and comprehensively examines their impact on life in the region, and beyond. * Provides a fresh approach and a new interpretation of the seismic changes of the last 40 years in Latin America * Introduces major themes from a humanistic and universal perspective, putting each subject in a context that readers can understand and relate to * Focuses on Ibero-America'--Brazil and the eighteen countries that were formerly Spanish possessions- while offering valuable comparative views of the non-Iberian areas of the Caribbean * Emphasizes the global, regional and national dimensions of the region's recent past

Awais Reza is a shopkeeper in Lahore's Anarkali Bazaar--the largest open market in South Asia--whose labyrinthine streets teem with shoppers, rickshaws, and cacophonous music.
But Anarkali's exuberant hubbub cannot conceal the fact that Pakistan is a country at the edge of a precipice. In recent years, the easy sociability that had once made up this vibrant community has been replaced with doubt and fear. Old-timers like Awais, who inherited his shop from his father and hopes one day to pass it on to his son, are being shouldered aside by easy money, discount stores, heroin peddlers, and the tyranny of fundamentalists.
Every night before Awais goes to bed, he plugs in his cell phone and hopes. He hopes that the city will not be plunged into a blackout, that the night will remain calm, that the following morning will bring affluent and happy customers to his shop and, most of all, that his three sons will safely return home. Each of the boys, though, has a very different vision of their, and Pakistan's, future.
The Bargain from the Bazaar--the product of eight years of field research--is an intimate window onto ordinary middle-class lives caught in the maelstrom of a nation falling to pieces. It's an absolutely compelling portrait of a family at risk--from a violently changing world on the outside and a growing terror from within.

The Lamaze method is virtually synonymous with natural childbirth in America. In the 1970s, taking Lamaze classes was a common rite of passage to parenthood. The conscious relaxation and patterned breathing techniques touted as a natural and empowering path to the alleviation of pain in childbirth resonated with the feminist and countercultural values of the era. In Lamaze, historian Paula Michaels tells the surprising story of the Lamaze method from its origins in the Soviet Union in the 1940s, to its popularization in France in the 1950s, and then to its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s in the US. Michaels shows how, for different reasons, in disparate national contexts, this technique for managing the pain of childbirth without resort to drugs found a following. The Soviet government embraced this method as a panacea to childbirth pain in the face of the material and fiscal shortages that followed World War II. Heated and sometimes ideologically inflected debates surrounded the Lamaze method as it moved from East to West amid the Cold War. Physicians in France sympathetic to the communist cause helped to export it across the Iron Curtain, but politics alone fails to explain why French women embraced this approach. Arriving on American shores around 1960, the Lamaze method took on new meanings. Initially it offered a path to a safer and more satisfying birth experience, but overtly political considerations came to the fore once again as feminists appropriated it as a way to resist the patriarchal authority of male obstetricians. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Michaels pieces together this complex and fascinating story at the crossroads of the history of politics, medicine, and women. The story of Lamaze illuminates the many contentious issues that swirl around birthing practices in America and Europe. Brimming with insight, Michaels' engaging history offers an instructive intervention in the debate about how to achieve humane, empowering, and safe maternity care for all women.

For much of his half-century career in the House of Commons, Tony Benn has been the most loved and loathed man in British politics. He has been idolized by the left, and reviled with equal measure by the Westminster establishment, not least by New Labour. Once tipped to lead the Labour Party, Benn's growing disillusionment with what he regarded as the democratic deficit infecting politics, reinforced his resolve to continue playing the role he valued most, as a good House of Commons Man.David Powell's fascinating new biography traces Tony Benn's extraordinary fifty year political career from the day he first entered the House in 1950. He argues that Benn's commitment to the House of Commons was fortified by his experiences during the thirty months when he fought to renounce his peerage and remain an MP; then during the twelve years he spent in government, and finally during the two decades he spent on the back benches, having been defeated in the bruising campaign for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party. Each was to provide him with an insight into the workings of power and cumulatively they were to convince him of the charade that passed for democracy not only in Westminster and in the Labour Party, but in the European Union and in the wider in the global context, with democratic ideals subordinated to the political and economic power of the United States. Benn has always a controversial figure. He was widely caricatured as Bogey Benn by the Tories during the 1970s and was more recently anathematised by Tony Blair as the man who almost knocked the Labour party over the edge of the cliff into extinction. Nonetheless many of the policies he championed, and for which he was widely belittled, have since entered the statute books. Indeed, if history is a chronicle of ironies, there can have been little more ironic than when, following Benn's valedictory speech in the Commons in 2001, a Tory backbencher commended him to fellow MPs as Britain's greatest living Parliamentarian.

In ruling against the controversial historian David Irving, whose libel suit against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt was tried in April 2000, the High Court in London labeled Irving a falsifier of history. No objective historian, declared the judge, would manipulate the documentary record in the way that Irving did. Richard J. Evans, a Cambridge historian and the chief adviser for the defense, uses this famous trial as a lens for exploring a range of difficult questions about the nature of the historian's enterprise.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2002

"Frost has created a usable past capable of enriching our understanding of the difficulties of democracy and the tough realities of American politics."
--"Peace & Change"

"The finest study to date on the ill-fated Economic research and Action Projecta].An outstanding work."
--"Choice"

"Frost contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the era and pushes past stereotypes of the sixties."
--"Journal of Social History"

"Frost has provided a coherent examination of the role of American women during the poor people's movement of the 1960s...there are many different things for scholars to admire about this book."
--"American Historical Review"

"I highly recommend this very accessible book...[it] includes rich archival and oral historical detail that should appeal to historians of the 1960s. For those of us interested in a more complex and intersectional analysis of the 1960s, this book is a welcome addition to the historical record."
-- "Contemporary Sociology"

.,."A solid contribution to the literature on the history of community organizing and radical resistance, one that can also add to contemporary debates about rebuilding public life and reviving democratic dissent and practice in America."
-- "The Journal of American History"

Community organizing became an integral part of the activist repertoire of the New Left in the 1960s. Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that came to be seen as synonymous with the white New Left, began community organizing in 1963, hoping to build an interracial movement of the poor through which to demand social and political change. SDS sought nothing less thanto abolish poverty and extend democratic participation in America.

Over the next five years, organizers established a strong presence in numerous low-income, racially diverse urban neighborhoods in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, and Boston, as well as other cities. Rejecting the strategies of the old left and labor movement and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, activists sought to combine a number of single issues into a broader, more powerful coalition. Organizers never limited themselves to today's simple dichotomies of race vs. class or of identity politics vs. economic inequality. They actively synthesized emerging identity politics with class and coalition politics and with a drive for a more participatory welfare state, treating these diverse political approaches as inextricably intertwined. While common wisdom holds that the New Left rejected all state involvement as cooptative at best, Jennifer Frost traces the ways in which New Left and community activists did in fact put forward a prescriptive, even visionary, alternative to the welfare state.

After Students for a Democratic Society and its community organizing unit, the Economic Research and Action Project, disbanded, New Left and community participants went on to apply their strategies and goals to the welfare rights, women's liberation, and the antiwar movements. In her study of activism before the age of identity politics, Frost has given us the first full-fledged history of what was arguably the most innovative community organizing campaign in post-war American history.

This study investigates six German Jewish writers' negotiation of Jewish-German-Communist identity in post-Holocaust East Germany. This study investigates the negotiation of Jewish-German-Communist identity in post-Holocaust Germany, specifically East Germany. After an introduction to the political-historical context, it highlights the conflicted writings of six East German Jewish writers: Anna Seghers (1900-1983), Stefan Heym (1913-2001), Stephan Hermlin (1915-1997), Jurek Becker (1937-1997), Peter Edel (1921-1983), and Fred Wander (1917-2006). All were Holocaust survivors. All lost family members in the Holocaust. All were important writers who played a leading role in East German cultural life, and all were loyal citizens and committed socialists, although their definitions of and maneuvers regarding Party loyalty differed greatly. Good soldiers, they viewed their writing as contributing to the social-political revolution taking place in East Germany. Informed by Holocaust and trauma studies, as well as psychology and deconstruction, this study looks for moments when Party discipline falters and other, repressed, thoughts and emotions surface, decentering the works. Some recurring questions addressed include: What is the image of Germans? Do the works evidence revenge fantasies? How does the negotiation of ostensibly mutually exclusive identities play out? Is there acknowledgment of the insufficiency of Communist theory to explain antisemitism, as well as recognition of Stalinist or other forms of Communist antisemitism? Although these writers ultimately established themselves in East Germany, attaining positions of privilege and even power, their best works nonetheless evince an acute sense of endangerment and vulnerability; they are documents both created and marked by trauma.

The volume will provide a coherent critical examination of current issues related to the religious roots of contemporary, i.e. post-1990 European identity, by analyzing the components of contemporary European identity, the presence of religion in the development of national identities, manifestation of religious roots in secular society, and the role of religion in further European integration and social inclusion. The publication will involve a multi and interdisciplinary approach to the theme, by bringing together scholars in history, religious studies, sociology, cultural studies, European studies, and international relations. The rigorously edited volume will provide a coherent analysis of the religious roots of Europe's identity today, with particular attention to the secular context of religious communities. Europe is often perceived as secular by most of its citizens, regardless of their creed. Bearing this in mind, the authors will build upon their expertise in different fields of arts and humanities to identify some of the key elements of European religious heritage and its manifestation in Europe's identity, be it secular or otherwise perceived. The authors will also indicate the role that these elements play in further European integration. With the focused approach, the publication will identify a number of similarities across faiths and, more holistically, vis-a-vis Europe. This will serve the readers to perceive their own identity in a wider context of shared values, reaching beyond a particular faith or non-religious framework.

In this magisterial new work, Bancroft Prize-winning historian David Kyvig chronicles the rise of a culture of impeachment since 1960-one that extends far beyond the infamous scandals surrounding Presidents Richard Nixon (Watergate) and Bill Clinton (Monica Lewinsky) and has dramatically altered the face of American politics.

A buzz word in today's public life, "impeachment" was anything but that before 1960. Since then it has been transformed from a historically little-known and little-used tool of last resort into a political weapon of choice. By examining the details and consequences of impeachment episodes involving three Supreme Court justices, a vice president, five federal judges, and four presidents, Kyvig explores this seismic shift in our constitutional culture and gauges its ongoing implications for American political life.

Beginning with the John Birch Society's campaign against Chief Justice Earl Warren, impeachment efforts became far more frequent after 1960, with eight actually ending in resignation or removal. In describing these efforts, Kyvig recounts stories and subplots about key political actors and the controversies they inspired. He argues that judicial cases are as important as the better-known presidential ones and shows why those cases that did not proceed-against not only Warren, but also Abe Fortas, William O. Douglas, Spiro Agnew, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush-are as illuminating as those that did.

Kyvig demonstrates that impeachment has been the bellwether of a changing-and increasingly toxic-political climate. Perhaps most important and ominous, the increasing threat of impeachment has encouraged presidents to hide potentially impeachable actions behind a thick veil of executive secrecy, while dramatically expanding executive power beyond the reach of either Congress or the courts.

Combining political and legal history at their best, Kyvig also explores the cultural impact of journalist David Frost, editorial cartoonist Herblock, and filmmakers Alan Pakula, Robert Altman, and Oliver Stone. A gifted storyteller, he presents a cautionary tale that should be read by all who care about our national government and its ability to survive and thrive in perilous times.

From the first free elections in post-Soviet Russia in 1989 to the end of the Yeltsin period in 1999, Russia's parliament was the site of great political upheavals. Conflicts between communists and reformers generated constant turmoil, and twice parliamentary institutions broke down in violence. This book offers the first full account of the inaugural decade of Russia's parliament. Thomas F. Remington, a leading scholar of Russian politics, describes in unique detail the Gorbachev-era parliament of 1989-91, the interim parliament of 1990-93, and the current Federal Assembly.

Focusing particularly on the emergence of parliamentary parties and bicameralism, Remington explores how the organization of the Russian parliament changed, why some changes failed while others were accepted, and why the current parliament is more effective and viable than its predecessors. He links the story of parliamentary evolution in Russia to contemporary theories of institutional development and concludes that, notwithstanding the turbulence of Russia's first postcommunist decade, parliament has served as a stabilizing influence in Russian political life.

Largely overshadowed by World War II's "greatest generation" and the more vocal veterans of the Vietnam era, Korean War veterans remain relatively invisible in the narratives of both war and its aftermath. Yet, just as the beaches of Normandy and the jungles of Vietnam worked profound changes on conflict participants, the Korean Peninsula chipped away at the beliefs, physical and mental well-being, and fortitude of Americans completing wartime tours of duty there. Upon returning home, Korean War veterans struggled with home front attitudes toward the war, faced employment and family dilemmas, and wrestled with readjustment. Not unlike other wars, Korea proved a formative and defining influence on the men and women stationed in theater, on their loved ones, and in some measure on American culture. In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation not only gives voice to those Americans who served in the "forgotten war" but chronicles the larger personal and collective consequences of waging war the American way.

This authoritative exploration of the ethnic history of the former Yugoslavia traces the roots of the conflicts that convulsed the region in the 1990s. At the end of the 20th century, interregional conflicts in the former Yugoslavia culminated with Slobodon Miloflevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing, which led to NATO intervention and ultimately revolution. What ignited these conflicts? What can we learn from them about introducing democracy in multiethnic regions? What does the future hold for the region? To answer these questions, this timely volume examines the ethnic history of the former Yugoslavia. From the settlement of the South Slavs in the 6th century to the present-paying special attention to the post-World War II era, the crisis and democratization in the 1980s, and the disintegration of the country in the early 1990s. This comprehensive single volume traces the bloody history of the region through to the fragile alliances of its present-day countries. An in-depth survey of the ethnic history of the former Yugoslavia, organized into three main parts: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow Dozens of tables and maps showing ethnic composition, demographics, and settlement patterns

This is a book about what people imagine it means to live in a world where private property is dominant, and their fears - and sometimes hopes - about living in a future world where private property has disappeared. In the propertied imagination, private property is a fragile thing, an institution beset by terrifying enemies and racialised and gendered mobs: Levellers and Diggers, socialists and anarchists, fervent religious radicals, abolitionists, feminists, and haughty welfare-state bureaucrats. The history of private property is the history of a recurring nightmare that one or another of these groups would storm the castle and take control. That threatened social chaos is the central unifying story of this book. Private property and the fear of social chaos starts by charting the thinkers who laid the foundations for how we understand private property, including Locke, Burke, Marx and Engels. The book looks at how their ideas have been put into practice in ways that continue to shape the modern world, from Harry Truman's housing policies and the anti-abolitionist George Fitzhugh to Margaret Thatcher and Elon Musk. Arguing that the spectre of 'the mob' has been intimately interconnected with the idea of private property throughout capitalist modernity, the book ambitiously narrates this history from the early colonisation of the Americas to Silicon Valley, and the future of human colonisation in space. -- .

This single-volume work provides a concise, up-to-date, and reliable reference work that students, teachers, and general readers can turn to for a comprehensive overview of the civil rights movement-a period of time incorporating events that shaped today's society. This single volume encyclopedia not only provides accessible A-Z entries about the well-known people and events of the Civil Rights Movement but also offers coverage of lesser-known contributors to the movement's overall success and outcomes. This comprehensive work provides both authoritative ready reference and curricular content presented in a lively and accessible format that will support inquiry, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the importance of the time period. The Civil Rights Movement in America: From Black Nationalism to the Women's Political Council provides high school readers with accessible factual information and sources for further exploration. Its entries serve to document how the movement eventually toppled Jim Crow and inspired broader struggles for human rights, including the women's and gay liberation movements in the United States and around the globe. Just as importantly, the events of the civil rights movement serve to demonstrate the ability of ordinary people such as Rosa Parks to alter the course of history-an apt lesson for all readers. Includes primary documents such as the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 accompanied by introductory essays that provide key historical context Supplies entries on a broad cast of actors, ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to Septima Clark, Virginia and Clifford Durr, Rosa Parks, and The Last Poets, thereby capturing the diversity of those who fought for racial equality Provides sidebars and carefully selected images that bring this people's movement to life for high school readers-personal stories; descriptions of lesser-known individuals, organizations, and speeches; connections to popular culture; and maps of the freedom ride route

After the Second World War, two contrasting political movements became increasingly active in Italy - the communist and feminist movements. In this book, Walter Baroni uses autobiographical life-writing from both movements key protagonists to shed new light on the history of these movements and more broadly the similarities and differences between political activists in post-war Italy.

Considered one of America's engineering marvels, the Panama Canal sparked intense debates in the 1970s over the decision to turn it back over to Panama. In this remarkable and revealing tale, noted journalist Adam Clymer shows how the decision to give up this revered monument of the "American century" stirred emotions already rubbed raw by the loss of the Vietnam War and shaped American politics for years.

Jimmy Carter made the Canal his first foreign policy priority and won the battle to ratify the Panama Canal treaties. But, Clymer reveals, the larger war was lost. The issue gave Ronald Reagan a slogan that kept his 1976 candidacy alive and positioned him to win in 1980, helped elect conservative senators who made a Republican majority, and fueled the overall growth of conservatism.

In telling the story of America's reconsideration of the 1903 treaty that gave it control of the Canal "in perpetuity," Clymer focuses on the perspectives of six key players: Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker, political candidate Gordon Humphrey, and Terry Dolan of the National Conservative Political Action Committee. His narrative illuminates many aspects of American politics during the Ford and Carter years-especially regarding Senate elections-that have been largely overlooked. And his chronicling of the emergence of political action committees on the right reveals their often-awkward relationship with the GOP and the uneasy alliances that helped the Republicans win control of the Senate in 1980.

Clymer explores how the uproar over the Canal episode foreshadowed perennial partisan attacks over intense, emotional issues from abortion to gun control to same-sex marriage. He also shows that people who hated the idea of giving up the canal gave birth to the NCPAC approach of beating up on an incumbent long before an election, often assisted by independent spending and outside advertising.

As Clymer argues, "The Panama Canal no longer divides Panama. But the fissures it opened 30 years ago have widened; they divide the United States." His even-handed account offers new insight into the "Reagan Revolution" and highlights an overlooked turning point in American political history.

The Guide aims to demystify and clarify one of the key conflicts of our time, explaining who, what, where, and why in a balanced manner. "The Arab-Israeli Conflict" explains what the term "Arab-Israeli Conflict" refers to, providing an accurate and dispassionate description of the current situation, its origins, as well as the people involved and their motivations. It outlines in an accessible manner the past and present events that have led to the current divisions and hostilities. Using a thematic approach, the work examines key questions such as the importance of Jerusalem, borders and the West Bank, settlements, terrorism, Palestinian and Israeli political structures and internal divisions, the role of the United States (and other countries), the significance of ethnic identity and religion, and more. "The Arab-Israeli Conflict" illuminates the nature and course of the conflict, fostering a better understanding of the current situation and what we hear in the news almost daily. Written by an expert in the field, the guide will appeal to anyone perplexed by this ongoing and seemingly intractable conflict. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

A spasm of extreme radicalism that rocked China to its foundations in the mid- to late 1960s, the Cultural Revolution has generated a vast literature. Much of it, however, is at a birds-eye level, and we have very few detailed accounts of how it worked on the ground. Long after the event, Tan Hecheng, now a retired Chinese writer and editor, was sent to Daoxian, Mao's home county, to report on the official investigation into the massacre that took place there during the Cultural Revolution. In The Killing Wind, Tan recounts how over the course of 66 days in 1967, over 9,000 Chinese "class enemies" were massacred in the Daoxian, in the Hunan Province. The killings were unprovoked and carried out with incredible, stomach-churning brutality, which is documented here in excruciating detail. But although this could easily be just a compendium of horrors, it's also a meditation on memory, moral culpability, and the failure of the Chinese government to come to terms with the crimes of the Maoist era. Tan interweaves the story of his research with the recollections of survivors and reflections on the long-term consequences of the Cultural Revolution. Akin to Jan Gross's Neighbors, about the Holocaust in a Polish town, The Killing Wind likewise paints a single episode in extraordinary detail in order to make a broader argument about the long term consequences flowing from one of the twentieth century's greatest human tragedies.

Blending African social history with US foreign relations, John V. Clune documents how ordinary people experienced a major aspect of Cold War diplomacy. The book describes how military-sponsored international travel, especially military training abroad and United Nations peacekeeping deployments in the Sinai and Lebanon, altered Ghanaian service members and their families during the three decades after independence in 1957. Military assistance to Ghana included sponsoring training and education in the United States, and American policymakers imagined that national modernization would result from the personal relationships Ghanaian service members and their families would forge. As an act of faith, American military assistance policy with Ghana remained remarkably consistent despite little evidence that military education and training in the United States produced any measurable results. Merging newly discovered documents from Ghana's armed forces and declassified sources on American military assistance to Africa, this work argues that military-sponsored travel made individual Ghanaians' outlooks on the world more international, just as military assistance planners hoped they would, but the Ghanaian state struggled to turn that new identity into political or economic progress.

South Africa came late to television; when it finally arrived in the late 1970s the rest of the world had already begun to shun the country because of apartheid. While the ruling National Party feared the integrative effects of television, they did not foresee how exclusion from globally unifying broadcasts would gradually erode their power.

Throughout the apartheid-era, South Africa was barred from participating in some of television’s greatest global attractions, including sporting events such as the Olympics and contests such as Miss World. After apartheid, and with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison – itself one of the world’s most memorable media events, came a proliferation of large-scale live broadcasts that attracted the admiration of the rest of the world. At the same time, the country was permitted to return to international competition. These events were pivotal in shaping and consolidating the country’s emerging post-apartheid national identity.

Broadcasting the End of Apartheid assesses the socio-political effect of live broadcasting on South Africa’s transition to democracy. Martha Evans argues that just as print media had a powerful influence on the development of Afrikaner nationalism, so the “liveness” of television helped to consolidate the “newness” of the post-apartheid South African national identity.