The Ruby programming language is perfect for beginners: easy to learn, powerful, and fun to use! But wouldn't it be more fun if you were learning with the help of some wizards and dragons?Ruby Wizardry is a playful, illustrated tale that will teach you how to program in Ruby by taking you on a fantastical journey. As you follow the adventures of young heroes Ruben and Scarlet, you’ll learn real programming skills, like how to:–Use fundamental concepts like variables...

Two couples have been friends for years. Their families have hung out, but they've spent many evenings alone as just couples, without the kids. They are comfortable together as a group and they've always enjoyed each other's company. So, Miranda and Kyle wonder why not enjoy each other more on a whole deeper level?One evening when the two couples are enjoying dinner, the topic of sex comes up. They fall into a flirty discussion that launches the foursome into a new topic they've ne...

Nationalism in the New World brings together work by scholars from the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe to discuss the common problem of how the nations of the Americas grappled with the basic questions of nationalism: Who are we? How do we imagine ourselves as a nation? Debates over the origins and meanings of nationalism have emerged at the forefront of the humanities and social sciences over the past two decades. However, these discussions have been mostly about...

An unprecedented account of the long-term cultural and political influences that Mexican-Americans will have on the collective character of our nation.In considering the largest immigrant group in American history, Gregory Rodriguez examines the complexities of its heritage and of the racial and cultural synthesis--mestizaje--that has defined the Mexican people since the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. He persuasively argues that the rapidly expanding Mexican American i...

In The Color of Modernity, Barbara Weinstein focuses on race, gender, and regionalism in the formation of national identities in Brazil; this focus allows her to explore how uneven patterns of economic development are consolidated and understood. Organized around two principal episodes—the 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution and 1954’s IV Centenário, the quadricentennial of São Paulo’s founding—this book shows how both elites and popular sectors in São Paulo embraced a regional iden...

Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. In the wake of this violence, a vibrant pan-Mayan movement has emerged, one that is challenging Ladino (non-indigenous) notions of citizenship and national identity. In The Blood of Guatemala Greg Grandin locates the origins of this ethnic resurgence within the social processes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century state formation rather than in the ruins...

Beyond Slavery traces the enduring impact and legacy of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean in the modern era. In a rich set of essays, the volume explores the multiple ways that Africans have affected political, economic, and cultural life throughout the region. Focusing on areas traditionally associated with Afro-Latin American culture such as Brazil and the Caribbean basin, this innovative work also highlights places such as Rio de La Plata and Central America, where...

Colonialism and Its Legacy brings together essays by leading scholars in both the fields of political theory and the history of political thought about European colonialism and its legacies, and postcolonial social and political theory. The essays explore the ways in which European colonial projects structured and shaped much of modern political theory, how concepts from political philosophy affected and were realized in colonial and imperial practice, and how we can understand th...

This prize-winning study examines the historical interplay of racial identity, nationality, and family formation in Cuba from the 18th century to today.Since the 19th century, there have been two opposing perspectives on Cuban racial identity: one that frames Cubans as white, and one that sees them as racially mixed based on acceptance of African descent. For the past two centuries, these competing views of have remained in continuous tension, while Cuban women and...

Of the almost 11 million Africans who came to the Americas between 1500 and 1870, two-thirds came to Spanish America and Brazil. Over four centuries, Africans and their descendants—both free and enslaved—participated in the political, social, and cultural movements that indelibly shaped their countries’ colonial and post-independence pasts. Yet until very recently Afro-Latin Americans were conspicuously excluded from narratives of their hemisphere’s history.George Reid Andrews seek...

In this history of black thought and racial activism in twentieth-century Brazil, Paulina Alberto demonstrates that black intellectuals, and not just elite white Brazilians, shaped discourses about race relations and the cultural and political terms of inclusion in their modern nation.Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the prolific black press of the era, and focusing on the influential urban centers of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador da Bahia, Alberto traces the...

How Brazil’s long history of racism and authoritarian politics has led to the country’s present crises and epidemic of violenceBrazil has long nurtured a cherished national myth, one of a tolerant, peaceful, and racially harmonious society. A closer look at the nation's heritage, however, reveals a far more troubling story. In Brazilian Authoritarianism, esteemed anthropologist and historian Lilia Schwarcz presents a provocative and panora...