Product Description
Since its birth in 1781, Los Angeles has come to define both the material and spiritual force of American civilization. The American dream is realized, experienced, and lost in the City of Angels. Unmasking L.A.: Third Worlds and the City, an interdisciplinary collection of essays, dialogues, and photographs, seeks to reveal the third world geographies, cultures, and populations of Los Angeles. It examines the social, political, cultural, and literary climate of the city, bringing together diverse responses to the complexities facing Los Angeles from respected intellectuals, writers, and artists such as Mike Davis, Deepak Chopra, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. By uncovering the forces that marginalize Los Angeles's ever-shifting populations into internal third worlds, the collection unmasks the raw contradictions, the grim paradoxes, and the understated ironies of the global city.
... Read more

Product Description
This information-packed guide describes patterns of village life, and covers such subjects as Indian tools and artifacts, hunting techniques, and food. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Condition of book. Informative
I was pleased w/book. Practically NEW condition. Very informative book for those that want to learn about the native americans.

Outdated; has been revised
This is an outdated edition of this book. It has gone through extensive revision - including the title (the world "natural" has been removed to reflect the anthropogenic changes the Indians made in their environment).

Check out:
http://www.amazon.com/California-Indians-Their-Environment-Introduction/dp/0520256905/ref=pd_sim_b_2

AWESOME
THIS A WONDERFUL BOOK FROM A WELL KNOWN AUTHOR ROBERT HEIZER.
THIS BOOK A WEALTH OF INFORMATION ON CALIFORNIA NATIVE AMERICANS
AND THERE CULTURE.
GREAT TO ADD TO YOUR COLLECTION.
A++++

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA NATIVE AMERICAN SURVIVAL. ... Read more

Product Description
Ellis Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor, is the location of what was from January 1, 1892, until November 12, 1954 the main entry facility for immigrants entering the United States; the facility replaced the state-run Castle Garden Immigration Depot (1855?1890) in Manhattan. It is owned by the Federal government and is now part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, under the jurisdiction of the US National Park Service. Ellis Island was also the subject of a border dispute between the states of New York and New Jersey (see below). It is situated predominantly in Jersey City, New Jersey, although a small portion of its territory falls within neighboring New York City. ... Read more

Product Description
Los Angeles, City of Angels. A city with a remarkable history, over 200 years old. Interwoven with the Caughey's commentary are over 100 of the choicest essays on Los Angeles. The saga of cowtown turned post-war metropolis unfolds before the reader. ... Read more

Product Description
"My Moms was a good person. She cared, but she just couldn't hack us no more. She kept saying she gonna kill herself, too. The day she died, she told me that my father hit her, and I told her, That was good for you, for not cooking for him. And she left. I didn't know she took the pills, though. The next day, they told me she was dead."PistolThis searing portrait of inner-city life takes us inside one of America's deadly urban battlefrontsthe Puerto Rican neighborhood of Alphabet City on New York's Lower East Side. With unnerving clarity, Geoffrey Biddle shows us the people who live there, summoning their spirit against the brutalizing conditions of poverty, joblessness, drugs, crime, and violence. Capturing life in this ghetto on film and in words with rawness and compassion, he shows the human toll of impoverishment and neglect.In 1977 Geoffrey Biddle photographed the residents of Alphabet City for the first time. Ten years later, he returned to this same area and photographed many of the same people again, this time also interviewing them. Alphabet City is the result of those encounters.While the stories are unique, they coalesce into a single tale all the more jarring for the matter-of-fact tone in which it is told. There is Ariel, whose dreams of becoming a boxer were destroyed when he contracted AIDS. And Linda, raising three sons while sleeping in the street, hungry and drug-addicted. There are also tales of human resilience like Richard's, a defiant former gang member who now attends college. These stories belong not only to one New York neighborhood, but to urban ghettos across the United States.Framed by Miguel Algarn's compelling introduction and dramatized by the speakers' own testimony, Geoffrey Biddle's photographs are haunting portrayals of a ravaged community battling ineffectually against deprivation and betrayal. This book forces us to see faces and to hear voices that won't be easy to forget, and yet which in the end are not so different from our own. ... Read more

Product Description
17 b/w photographs, 1 mapIn exploring the career of Seki Hajime (1873-1935), who served as mayor of Japan's second-largest city, Osaka, Jeffrey E. Hanes traces the roots of social progressivism in prewar Japan. Seki, trained as a political economist in the late 1890s, when Japan was focused single-mindedly on "increasing industrial production," distinguished himself early on as a people-centered, rather than a state-centered, national economist. After three years of advanced study in Europe at the turn of the century, during which he engaged Marxism and later steeped himself in the exciting new field of social economics, Seki was transformed into a progressive.The social reformism of Seki and others had its roots in a transnational fellowship of progressives who shared the belief that civilized nations should be able to forge a middle path between capitalism and socialism. Hanes's sweeping study permits us not only to weave social progressivism into the modern Japanese historical narrative but also to reconceive it as a truly transnational movement whose impact was felt across the Pacific as well as the Atlantic. ... Read more

Product Description
Historian Mary P. Ryan traces the fate of public life and the emergence of ethnic, class, and gender conflict in the 19th-century city. Using as examples New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco, Ryan illustrates the way in which American cities of the 19th century were as full of cultural differences and as fractured by social and economic changes as any metropolis today. 41 photos. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant book
I recently read another of Ryan's books for a paper I was writing on woman's suffrage. I was so impressed, I looked up all herbooks. In one sense, "Civic Wars" continues on the theme of Ryan's: "Banners and Ballots" in examining the challenges that have historically stymied feminist historians in that so much of women's influence has consisted in the private (as opposed to public) sphere--making it not only harder to trace, but harder to document as well. But there is a broader analysis here, too--well beyond the scope of women-- examining all the 'have-nots' of society and the means by which they used the levers of public dissent and protest to have a say in their democracy. Ryan is a lucid and compelling writer and in this book she provides ample evidence that in Frederick Douglas' words: "Power cedes nothing without demand." Great book.
P. Abeles

WHAT!!!!!!!
While this book has terrific content, I did not care for the fact that I had to stop every page and look up words. When I took the GRE I scored in the 96 percentile.I have a strong vocabulary, however, half the time I did not know what Ryan was saying.

This is an interesting book comparing the development of San Francisco, New York, and New Orleans.I would recommend it to anyone studying the 19 Century.You will need a dictionary to read the book, but you will learn a lot. ... Read more

Product Description
Discover the unknown California, beyond the glamour and gridlock. ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: California State University, Sacramento Walter William Herger, Jr. (born May 20, 1945), American politician, has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1987, representing the California's 2nd congressional district. The second district is physically large. The major cities are Chico, Redding and Red Bluff. Congressman Herger was born in Yuba City, California, and graduated from American River College with an Associate of Arts. He also attended California State University, Sacramento for a year. He grew up on his family's 200-acre (0.81 km) cattle ranch and plum farm in the northern California town of Rio Oso (between Yuba City and Sacramento). He also worked in the family's oil and gas exploration business. Herger's political career started in 1976, with his election to the East Nicolaus School Board. He also served northern California in the California State Assembly from 1980 to 1986. Herger is married to his second wife Pamela Sargent, with whom he has 9 children and 6 grandchildren. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and sits on the United States House Committee on Ways and Means. Herger grew up in California. He has Swiss roots (his grandfather emigrated to the US from the canton of Uri about 100 years ago). He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when he was about 20. Herger has easily been reelected to Congress due to the "safe" Republican voter registration advantage in this district, but his election campaigns have been challenged by Democratic candidates in recent elections. The district often fields a candidate registered with a third party, such as the Libertarian party and, during the 1990s, the Natural Law Party. In 2002 and 2004, Herger defea... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=408611 ... Read more

Product Description
In 1964 an Urban League survey ranked Los Angeles as the most desirable city for African Americans to live in. In 1965 the city burst into flames during one of the worst race riots in the nation's history. How the city came to such a pass--embodying both the best and worst of what urban America offered black migrants from the South--is the story told for the first time in this history of modern black Los Angeles. A clear-eyed and compelling look at black struggles for equality in L.A.'s neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces from the Great Depression to our day, L.A. City Limits critically refocuses the ongoing debate about the origins of America's racial and urban crisis.
Challenging previous analysts' near-exclusive focus on northern "rust-belt" cities devastated by de-industrialization, Josh Sides asserts that the cities to which black southerners migrated profoundly affected how they fared. He shows how L.A.'s diverse racial composition, dispersive geography, and dynamic postwar economy often created opportunities--and limits--quite different from those encountered by blacks in the urban North. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Well written history of African American LA
_L.A. City Limits_ documents the history of black migration to Southern California, starting from the 1920's. Blacks, fleeing racism in the South and other parts of the US, believed that California would be free of these problems.

Although free from the Jim Crow of the South (people could sit anywhere they wanted to on the bus, or be served in most stores without problems), the three big problems blacks ran into in Southern California were:

1. Employment discrimination. Blacks weren't hired, or if they were, were stuck in the most menial, undesirable jobs. White co-workers, and unions were often more of an obstacle to black employment than the companies themselves.

2. Housing discrimination. With few exceptions, blacks were only allowed to move into South Central LA and Watts. A variety of legal and illegal means were used to keep them out of other parts of Los Angeles, or the suburbs. Even nearby cities like Compton and Lynwood would not see that many blacks until later....

(Related to the above was transportation availability--as the suburbs developed, jobs moved there. People in Watts without a car were at a clear disadvantage, as the bus service was inadequate for reaching these suburbs)

3. in Los Angeles, unlike the South or Midwest,Mexicans competed with blacks for the lower level jobs. The level of discrimination they faced, as compared with that faced by blacks, varied (sometimes much less, sometimes a lot more). Throughout the time scale of the book, the author compares the Mexican experience with the African-American one.

The book provides good coverage of the 1920's and 30's, the war years, and all the way up through the 1965 Watts riots and their aftermath. It tends to lose steam, though, when describing events after the mid-70's.

Should be required reading for every Californian
This book is clear, well-written and very readable. For the first time, I understand the hope my parents must have had when they migrated to Los Angeles in 1957.

Recently, I was speaking to 20-somethings about my mom's yearning to attend high school since here Louisiana hometown did not have a school for her.Slack-jawed, they marveled that someone still alive would have experienced these acts that they thought were in the distant past.

This should be required reading for all Californians.

Excellent text
Well researched, written, accessible, and informative.
Useful to anyone interested in LA history, African-American history, and urban studies.A good book for undergrads, too.

historical intelligence in social storytelling
This is a great book. A special book. Here's why:

Josh Sides has given Los Angeles the kind of racial history that Mike Davis brought to bear on our popular image of the city and the kind of countervailing narrative that Chester Himes might have appreciated. This book's detailed look at Los Angeles shows us how the city's racial texture has changed, but it is also concerned to challenge how lazy we have all become in habitually characterizing racial LA as a city that can be reduced to the Watts Riots, OJ, gang violence, and Rodney King. As Sides tells the story, Los Angeles presents with a genuinely American paradox. Its racial story is a narrative of strife and difficulty, but it is also one of success and hope that rivals any other city's in the United States.

This book is perfectly readable, and it leaves you wondering how we can all think more carefully about what is actually happening in America, beneath easy stereotypes and lazy, stock media representations of race. ... Read more

Product Description
On Thursday, February 12, 2004, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, a lesbian couple who have been together for fifty-one years, became the first same-sex couple married at San Francisco City Hall. By March 11, when the California State Supreme Court ordered a halt to the weddings, 4.037 gay and lesbian couples had tied the knot. These couples had traveled to San Francisco by bus and plane. They had called in sick to work and packed their kids and camping gear into the backs of their cars, and headed to City Hall. They had stood in line through high wind and torrential rain, all for a chance to have their relationships legally recognized. Each couple has a unique story to tell.

While the media have focused on political aspects of the ongoing marriage debate, interviewing pundits and average citizens on both sides of the issue, by and large the lives of the newlyweds—their rich, diverse, and vibrant personal histories—have remained invisible. Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall introduces readers to the determined, brave, and loving couples who took center stage during the historical events at City Hall. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The best non-fiction book you should read
This wonderful collection of non-fiction essays is a must have for anyone, regardless of sexual preference. Each essay beautifully describes the heartwarming celebration of love between individuals in their voices. These brave couples became part of a civil rights movement like no other in US history in the early spring of 2004. Each story is well written and invites the reader into the most intimate moments of shared love, desire for commitment, struggles and triumph. Poignantly expressed, there is no doubt this is one of the best books I own. Impossible to read without wishing for more, one can only hope there will be more like it in the future.

This book has the power to change minds.
And it is also the best non-fiction book I have read in years!The stories are inspiring, humbling, and life-changing. The couples' struggles and desire to be married touched every part of my heart.I only hope that this book has as wide a readership as it deserves.

Give this inspirational book to every politician & religious leader in your community!
This book is a treasure, and most especially for an audience that may not be so familiar with the cultural, political and emotional importance of what happened at San Francisco City Hall last year.Editor Dumesnil was able to let the real voices of each stories' writer shine through, while skillfully making room for both the romance and the facts.

I say, mail this book to every politician, policy maker, religious leader and straight family you know to help them be inspired by what is really fueling the fight for marriage equality - love and the importance of family!

Whoever you are, you can't read this book without being moved by the power of love
What a gorgeous book. I just finished reading it and had to write this review. Imagine there were a special celebration of heterosexual marriage somewhere in the U.S. Imagine that straight couples who went there for the celebration would have to wait in line for hours in the rain and face heckling, hateful protesters, and even then might not get the special recognition of their marriage, their lives together in love, that they had been waiting for. Imagine how much in love any couples who would undergo that trial would have to be. Now you have a sense for the kind of love you can read about in Dumesnil's book. This is such an exciting time of change in America. I hope we look back, years from now, in an age of Marriage Equality and feel pride and gratitude for the couples in this book for paving the way in this important civil rights movement. Truly a powerful read--I was moved to tears by almost every story.

A powerful look into the lives of committed same-sex couples
Cheryl Dumesnil has done a magnificent job of collecting stories from couples that were legally married at City Hall in San Francisco during the "Winter of Love" in Feb-March 2004.The book covers stories of people ranging from those who were not married but participated (one has young as 18 years) to couples married for over half of a century.There are mixed-racial couples, couples coping with disabilities, young activists, a man who lost his partner to death but still helped all of those at City Hall to marry, couples nearly married who were heartbreakingly turned away on the steps of City Hall, couples together a few years, and couples together for over 50 years.Some couples jumped at the chance to marry -- others struggled with timing, and with the decision if official marriage would really cement an already strong relationship.The introduction by Rosie O'Donnell taught me that straight couples aren't forced to testify against each other in court, but gay couples are.I was continually reminded of all of the rights that are currently not afforded to committed, tax paying, loving couples of the same gender, and their children, in this country of "freedom."I laughed, I cried, I ached for the people in the book -- and for myself -- to be given chances for true equality.This book truly captured the feelings of those at City Hall (I know, I was there).The outpouring of love and volunteerism from straight and gay alike is something I, and others involved, will never forget.If you want to know more about the lives of some of the people involved in the "Winter of Love", this is a must-read. ... Read more

Product Description
When Art Agnos campaigned for mayor of San Francisco in 1987, he articulated and defended the "left" isms--liberalism, environmentalism, and populism. He won.

Seeing Agnos as a defender of slowgrowth vs. progrowth, the city's progressives had high hopes. But to their disappointment, in the wake of the passage of Proposition M--the most restrictive growth control legislation of any large U.S. city--Agnos supported waterfront development and proposals to build a new baseball stadium in China Basin and a large residential and business development in Mission Bay. In 1991 Agnos ran for reelection. He lost.

Left Coast City provides insight into how San Francisco's progressive coalition developed between 1975 and 1991, what stresses emerged to cause splintering within the coalition, and how the coalition fell apart in the 1991 mayoral campaign.

Focusing on San Francisco's turbulent political history, non-conformist traditions, and ethnic and cultural diversity, political scientist Richard DeLeon analyzes the successes and failures of the progressive movement as it topples the business-dominated progrowth regime, imposes stringent controls on growth and development, and achieves political control of city hall.

Although the movement has achieved national recognition as a possible vanguard of social and political change in this country, DeLeon argues that a new progressive regime has not yet emerged to replace the defunct progrowth regime. Having helped to create chaos out of order, progressive leaders now face the task of creating order out of chaos.

"What the city has now is, at best, an antiregime, a transitional political order set up defensively to block the Lazarus-like re-emergence of the old progrowth regime," DeLeon writes. "Such an order cannot last." The key to survival of the progressive movement, he contends, is creation of a progressive urban regime, where public and private entities function together.

This book is part of the Studies in Government and Public Policy series. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Essential in understanding San Francisco Politics
I have read this book and learned about San Francisco politics in a manner that could only be paralleled by an education at San Francisco State University.Highly informative and highly recommended.

A must read for those interested in San Francisco politics
If you are at all interested in the new role of cities in the global economy or San Francisco politics, this is the book to have. The most informative book on San Franicisco politics to date. Theoretically sophisticated and a readable case study at the same time ... Read more

Product Description
Brazil's innovative all-female police stations, installed as part of the return to civilian rule in the 1980s, mark the country's first effort to police domestic violence against women. Sarah J. Hautzinger's vividly detailed, accessibly written study explores this phenomenon as a window onto the shifting relationship between violence and gendered power struggles in the city of Salvador da Bahia. Hautzinger brings together distinct voices--unexpectedly macho policewomen, the battered women they are charged with defending, indomitable Bahian women who disdain female victims, and men who grapple with changing pressures related to masculinity and honor. What emerges is a view of Brazil's policing experiment as a pioneering, and potentially radical, response to demands of the women's movement to build feminism into the state in a society fundamentally shaped by gender. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Church and State, published by J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State on June 22, 2008. The length of the article is 10795 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Faith-based activism in American cities: the case of the San Francisco Catholic Action cadre.
Author: William Issel
Publication: Journal of Church and State (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2008
Publisher: J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State
Volume: 50Issue: 3Page: 519(22)

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

Product Description
The postborder metropolis of Bajalta California stretches from Los Angeles in the north to Tijuana and Mexicali in the south. Immigrants from all over the globe flock to Southern California, while corporations are drawn to the low wage industry of the Mexican border towns, echoing developments in other rapid growth areas such as Phoenix, El Paso, and San Antonio. This incredibly diverse, transnational megacity is giving birth to new cultural and artistic forms as it rapidly evolves into something unique in the world. Mixed Feelings is a genuinely interdisciplinary investigation of the hybrid culture on both sides of the increasingly fluid U.S. - Mexico border, spanning the disciplines of art and art history, urban planning, geography, Latina/o studies, and American studies. ... Read more

Product Description
"Post-Katrina New Orleans hasn't been an easy place to live, it hasn't been an easy place to be in love, it hasn't been an easy place to take care of yourself or see the bright side of things." So reflects Billy Sothern in this riveting and unforgettable insider's chronicle of the epic 2005 disaster and the year that followed. Sothern, a death penalty lawyer who with his wife, photographer Nikki Page, arrived in the Crescent City four years ahead of Katrina, delivers a haunting, personal, and quintessentially American story. Writing with an idealist's passion, a journalist's eye for detail, and a lawyer's attention to injustice, Sothern recounts their struggle to come to terms with the enormity of the apocalyptic scenario they managed to live through. He guides the reader on a journey through post-Katrina New Orleans and an array of indelible images: prisoners abandoned in their cells with waters rising, a longtime New Orleans resident of Middle Eastern descent unfairly imprisoned in the days following the hurricane, trailer-bound New Orleanians struggling to make ends meet but celebrating with abandon during Mardi Gras, Latino construction workers living in their trucks. As a lawyer-activist who has devoted his life to procuring justice for some of society's most disenfranchised citizens, Sothern offers a powerful vision of what Katrina has meant to New Orleans and what it still means to the nation at large. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Symbol of the Best and Worst of America
New Orleans was my parents first home after the WWII, and they truly loved every inch, every oddity, every horn, every bar, every hotel and citizen of this world that was unlike either of them had ever experienced. They shared the city with my sister and I, we grew up with the music, the smell and the food in our veins. Billy Sothern writes a symphony in words and emotions that every American should read and hear, an instrumental rendering of failures and racisim, of the death and resurection of a great American treasure. Buy and keep this book for your children and theirs!

Personal, engaging story
Disclaimer: I went to law school with Billy and was always moved by the heart and conviction he showed in an overwhelmingly corporate-directed environment.That he has spent his career representing death row inmates in New Orleans is not a surprise, but it is an inspiration.I loved reading the book: Billy writes beautifully and with heart.His deep love for NOLA comes through on every page, as does his pain at the aftermath of Katrina.The book is also impressively well researched.As a reader, I learned and I felt.To Billy: thank you for writing this and thank you for what you do.If only there were more people like you . . .

Liberalism Gone Amuck
Written with a very liberal slant, I found this book to be too biased in blaming the government for the woes of those left behind. While certainly, there is enough blame to go around, and the government did indeed fail, still, while reading this book, the lack of emphasis on personal responsibility was troubling to me.

However, I did enjoy learning about Louisiana politics and history. And, I did appreciate the authors clear, concise depiction of the political machine in place that allowed a swamp land to be developed for the sake of the almighty dollar.

I've read many books written about Katrina.This one is at the bottom of the list.

A Love Song and an Eulogy
Sothern, Billy. "Down in New Orleans: Reflections from a Drowned City", University of California Press, 2007.

A Love Song and an Eulogy

Two years ago Katrina took New Orleans by storm and now the stories are coming out. I can't imagine returning to the Crescent City but I do enjoy reading abut what is going on there. In "Down in New Orleans" Billy Sothern tells how hard it is to live in the town post-Katrina. He not only says that it is hard to live there but he also says that it is hard to love there and hard to take care of oneself. He carefully chronicles the coming of the storm as well as the year that followed it.
Sothern and his wife moved to New Orleans four years before Katrina and he writes both a love song and a eulogy to the city. He writes with passion and detail and explains how he and his wife came to deal with what they experienced. Some of the images that he presents make me remember just too well some of my own experiences that I have struggled to forget.
What amazes me the most is the spirit f the people who managed to celebrate Mardi Gras while living in trailers amid the destruction of the city. What is most important is that he looks at not only the vision of what Katrina brought to New Orleans but to the entire nation. He damns everything that went wrong after the stormbut also gives a beautiful tribute to New Orleans. It is hard to believe that two years later, New Orleans is still not back up and running as it should and that the government of the United States as done so little to help the city return to its former self.
This is a book that causes the heart to break and it does so by exposing the inners of the city that was having serous problems long before Katrina. We get to see the dignity and the desire of the survivors to have their city back but Sothern also looks at many urgent issues that do not seem to have any help coming. Sothern shows how the government of the United States has not served the common good and has not protected the poor and the vulnerable.
To forget and forsake New Orleans is a terrible thing and we can almost feel Sothern urging us to return and not just return but do so immediately.
Sothern's emotions are right there on the page and it is hard not to be moved by what he writes. As a former New Orleanian I found myself often moved to tears while reading but I also knew that I would not return to a city that has so many problems and class divisions. I love Little Rock and she has been good to me but that New Orleans inside of me will always be there. I left some of me there but I am not planning to return. I don't think I am ready or even want to deal with it all.
... Read more