Mount Pleasant has deep American roots going back to the Revolutionary War, when local tenant farmers filled the ranks of General Washington�s Continental army. For years, travel to New York City was difficult, until the arrival of the railroad in 1846 allowed easy transportation to lower Manhattan. In 1893, John D. Rockefeller Sr. began buying land in Pocantico and built his classic Georgian mansion. The massive Kensico Dam in Valhalla was completed in 1917 to satisfy the growing thirst o...

In 2000, the National Police of Colombia reported that 25,660 people met violent deaths in that country. According to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, 170 civilians were killed in the first 18 days of 2001 in massacres and selective homicides related to that country’s terrible civil war. By drawing on diverse sources of information, this work brings together the thoughts of historians, journalists, human rights activists, social scientists, military ve...

The shocking true story of corrupt judges who made millions by sending children to a private juvenile detention facility: "A harrowing tale, lucidly told" ( The New York Times Book Review).In this sensational work of true crime that reads like a thriller, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter William Ecenbarger exposes a long-running scandal that ruined thousands of young lives. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan were doi...

MANY CULTURES * ONE WORLD"Boricua is what Puerto Ricans call one another as a term of endearment, respect, and cultural affirmation; it is a timeless declaration that transcends gender and color. Boricua is a powerful word that tells the origin and history of the Puerto Rican people."--From the IntroductionFrom the sun-drenched beaches of a beautiful, flamboyan-covered island to the cool, hard pavement of the fierce South Bronx, the remarkable journey of the Puerto Ric...

A longtime immigration activist explores what it means to be an undocumented American in this “impassioned and well-reported case for change” (New York Times).In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to wha...

Dagoberto Gilb is "one of the most powerful writers in his generation, and The Flowers is perhaps his best book . . . Not to be missed" (Larry McMurtry).Sonny Bravo is a sensitive, unusually smart fifteen-year-old who lives with his vivacious mother. But when she marries an Okie building contractor, they are uprooted to a small apartment building in a city where prejudice is not just white against black, but also brown.As Sonny meets his new neighb...

Light in the Dark is the culmination of Gloria E. Anzaldúa's mature thought and the most comprehensive presentation of her philosophy. Focusing on aesthetics, ontology, epistemology, and ethics, it contains several developments in her many important theoretical contributions.

Today the achievement gap is hotly debated among pundits, politicians, and educators. In particular this conversation often focuses on the two fastest-growing demographic groups in the United States: Asian Americans and Latinos. In Academic Profiling, Gilda L. Ochoa addresses this so-called gap by going directly to the source. At one California public high school where the controversy is lived every day, Ochoa turns to the students, teachers, and parents to learn about the very re...

This book is a powerful first-hand account of religious ministry reaching out to heal the lives of desperate people who come to the United States, often illegally, seeking a better life.

Ebbs and Flows of Medieval Empires, AD 9001400 provides a flow of history throughout the medieval world from 900 to 1400 AD, describing the ebbs and flows of empires as the western world recovered from the dark ages. As a point of reference, author Will Slatyer presents the empires in Asia in the same timeframes as European empires, illustrating patterns of similarity among these empires. War remained important to leaders of the emerging nation and states as a primary method of gaining ter...

The divide over race is usually framed as one over Black and White. Sociologist Eileen O’Brien is interested in that middle terrain, what sits in the ever-increasing gray area she dubbed the racial middle.The Racial Middle, tells the story of the other racial and ethnic groups in America, mainly Latinos and Asian Americans, two of the largest and fastest-growing minorities in the United States. Using dozens of in-depth interviews with people of various ethnic and ge...

This account of the infamous asylum is "an excellent record of greed and corruption, but it is also a powerful testimonial to compassion and kindness" ( Hidden City).The Quaker City and its hospitals were pioneers in the field of mental health. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, its institutions were crowded and patients lived in shocking conditions. The mentally ill were quartered with the dangerously criminal. By 1906, the city had purchased a vast...