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The Story of Mexico's political rebirth, by two pulitzer prize-winning reporters Opening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens' movement which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation, the book gives new and gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico's recent politics. Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, led by presidents who ruled like Mesoamerican monarchs, came to be called "the perfect dictatorship." But a 1968 massacre of student protesters by government snipers ignited the desire for demo...
In our globalized world, borders are back with a vengeance. New data shows a massive increase of walls and barriers between countries after 2001. However, at the same time, the flow of people and the growth of trade have continued at impressive rates, and arguments for more open borders remain relevant. In The Border, Martin Schain compares how and why border policy has become increasingly important, politicized, and divisive in both Europe and the United States. Drawing from an intensive analysis of documents and interviews, he argues that border control is a growing international movement. In Europe, the European Union is under scrutiny, and many countries seek to block the entry of asylum...
"Kagan contends that the Carter administration's halfhearted intervention in Nicaragua was in response to American feelings of guilt for Washington's longtime support of the Somoza dynasty. The Reagan-era intervention, on the other hand, originated in American anxiety over Soviet encroachment in the Western hemisphere. Kagan recounts how American popular aversion to the employment of U.S. military muscle in Central America led to the administration's covert support of the contras and goes on to explain how the clash between the Reagan White House and Congress over "freedom fighter" funding led to the Iran-contra affair in 1987. Although the surprising electoral victory of Violeta Chamorro over the Sandinistas was widely recognized as a success for American policy, the U.S. remains caught in a continuous cycle of intervention and withdrawal in Nicaragua, according to Kagan. As a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, Kagan was a direct participant in many of the events described in this authoritative and definitive account of U.S."--Publisher's description.
Positing that presidents shape America's foreign policy according to their ethnic heritage, this intriguing volume examines two groups that have dominated the presidency and the distinctly different agendas that have resulted. How is American foreign policy determined? The Great Anglo-Celtic Divide in the History of American Foreign Relations approaches that question from a fascinating perspective, arguing that, to a large extent, the answer lies in the ethnicity of the president. To make its point, this book examines the key foreign policies of American presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush and shows how their most important foreign policy decisions have tended to follow an et...
The exploitation of Latino workers in many industries, from agriculture and meat packing to textile manufacturing and janitorial services, is well known. By contrast, pineros -- itinerant workers who form the backbone of the forest management labour force on federal land -- toil largely in obscurity. Drawing on government papers, media accounts, and interviews with federal employees and Latino forest workers in Oregon’s Rogue Valley, Brinda Sarathy investigates how the federal government came to be one of the single largest employers of Latino labour in the Pacific Northwest. She documents pinero wages, working conditions, and benefits in comparison to those of white loggers and tree planters, exposing exploitation that, she argues, is the product of an ongoing history of institutionalized racism, fragmented policy, and intra-ethnic exploitation in the West. To overcome this legacy, Sarathy offers a number of proposals to improve the visibility and working conditions of pineros and to provide them with a stronger voice in immigration and forestry policy-making.
In 1975, Texas adopted a law allowing school districts to bar children from public schools if they were in the United States unlawfully. The US Supreme Court responded in 1982 with a landmark decision, Plyler v. Doe, that kept open the schoolhouse doors, allowing these children to get the education that state law would have denied. The Court established a child's constitutional right to attend public elementary and secondary schools, regardless of immigration status. With Plyler, three questions emerged that have remained central to the national conversation about immigration outside the law: What does it mean to be in the country unlawfully? What is the role of state and local governments i...
American history told from the vantage of immigration politics It is often said that with the election of Donald Trump nativism was raised from the dead. After all, here was a president who organized his campaign around a rhetoric of unvarnished racism and xenophobia. Among his first acts on taking office was to block foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. But although his actions may often seem unprecedented, they are not as unusual as many people believe. This story doesn’t begin with Trump. For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike have employed xenophobic ideas and policies, declaring time and again that “illegal immigration”...
A detailed and engaging historical examination that provides an intimate understanding of the daily life of the new immigrants in the United States. In the last decades, a growing number of immigrants from around the world have arrived in the United States. Daily Life of the New Americans: Immigration since 1965 provides a thematic overview of their everyday lives and underscores the diversity and complexity of the newcomer experience. Organized into 6 thematic chapters, the book examines how immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe are changing the face of the American nation, and, at the same time, are themselves being changed by living in America. The stories told here are enhanced through the use of oral histories that bring immigrant experiences vividly to life.
In a book of deep and telling ironies, Peter Schrag provides essential background for understanding the fractious debate over immigration. Covering the earliest days of the Republic to current events, Schrag sets the modern immigration controversy within the context of three centuries of debate over the same questions about who exactly is fit for citizenship. He finds that nativism has long colored our national history, and that the fear—and loathing—of newcomers has provided one of the faultlines of American cultural and political life. Schrag describes the eerie similarities between the race-based arguments for restricting Irish, German, Slav, Italian, Jewish, and Chinese immigrants in the past and the arguments for restricting Latinos and others today. He links the terrible history of eugenic "science" to ideas, individuals, and groups now at the forefront of the fight against rational immigration policies. Not Fit for Our Society makes a powerful case for understanding the complex, often paradoxical history of immigration restriction as we work through the issues that inform, and often distort, the debate over who can become a citizen, who decides, and on what basis.