A practical, comprehensive guide to the history and culture of American Latinos, written in a lively prose. Educator and author (Hispanics in the U.S. Through 1865; Hispanics in U.S. History: 1865 to the Present, both 1989) de Varona has compiled historical and cultural data on the last 500 years of Hispanic contributions to American culture. Making up 10 percent of the US population, it is anticipated that in another 50 years Latinos will comprise more than a fifth of our population, surpassing African-Americans as the nation's largest minority. Nonetheless, Latino contributions to our country have generally been overlooked by historians and by the authors of school texts. De Varona notes, for example, that during both world wars, Latinos, despite being victims of acute discrimination, volunteered for the armed forces in a higher percentage than any other ethnic group in our country and ``earned disproportionately more Medals of Honor than any other group as well.'' Our histories have tended to ignore not only the contributions of Latinos to American culture, but the intense discrimination faced by Hispanics in America. When Americans sought scapegoats for their ills during hard times, Mexican immigrants proved easy targets. Many Anglos in the 1940s, for example, felt that they had the right to assault anyone dressed in the ``zoot suits'' that had become identified with Mexican- American youth because they believed that young Latinos were benefiting from the resurgent American economy during WW II without being sufficiently committed to the war effort. Beyond its concise history, this book features lists such as record of Hispanic cultural celebrations, common English words derived from Spanish, and a bibliography of literary works by writers of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban descent. Enlightening and often entertaining, Latino Literacy is a necessary addition to America's multicultural library. In addition to its popular appeal to Latinos, it should prove an invaluable resource for all educators.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-3858-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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