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Frederick Aldama’s The Cinema of Robert Rodriguez (2014) was the first full-scale study of one of the most prolific and significant Latino directors making films today. In this companion volume, Aldama enlists a corps of experts to analyze a majority of Rodriguez’s feature films, from his first break-out success El Mariachi in 1992 to Machete in 2010. The essays explore the formal and thematic features present in his films from the perspectives of industry (context, convention, and distribution), the film blueprint (auditory and visual ingredients), and consumption (ideal and real audiences). The authors illuminate the manifold ways in which Rodriguez’s films operate internally (plot, character, and event) and externally (audience perception, thought, and feeling).

The volume is divided into three parts: “Matters of Mind and Media” includes essays that use psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology to shed light on how Rodriguez’s films complicate Latino identity, as well as how they succeed in remaking audiences’ preconceptions of the world. “Narrative Theory, Cognitive Science, and Sin City: A Case Study” offers tools and models of analysis for the study of Rodriguez’s film re-creation of a comic book (on which Frank Miller was credited as codirector). “Aesthetic and Ontological Border Crossings and Borderlands” considers how Rodriguez’s films innovatively critique fixed notions of Latino identity and experience, as well as open eyes to racial injustices. As a whole, the volume demonstrates how Rodriguez’s career offers critical insights into the filmmaking industry, the creative process, and the consuming and reception of contemporary film.

A child’s journey through war, memory, and survival—told with haunting clarity and poetic grace.

Crossing the River is a personal memoir—and more. Against the backdrop of Lithuania’s occupation—first by the Red Army, next by the Germans, and then again by the Russians—it is a story reflected through the prism of a sharp-eyed young child, Shalom Eilati. His story starts in the occupied Kovno Ghetto and ends with his flight across the Soviet border, through Poland and Germany and finally, his arrival in Palestine.

The adult survivor, while recalling the terrorized child that he was and how he then perceived the adult world, also takes stock of his present life. Throughout the memoir, Eilati attempts to reconcile his present life as a husband, father, scientist, and writer, with the images, feelings, and thoughts from the past that have left an indelible mark on his life and that continue to haunt him.

What could possibly impel a relatively privileged twenty-four-year-old American-serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1952 to swim across the Danube River to what was then referred to as the Soviet Zone? How are we to understand his decision to forsake the land of his birth and build a new life in the still young German Democratic Republic? These are the questions at the core of this memoir by Victor Grossman, who was born Stephen Wechsler but changed his name after defecting to the GDR. 

A child of the Depression, Grossman witnessed firsthand the dislocations wrought by the collapse of the U.S. economy during the 1930s. Widespread unemployment and poverty, CIO sit-down strikes, and the fight to save Republican Spain from fascism-all made an indelible impression as he grew up in an environment that nurtured a commitment to left-wing causes. He continued his involvement with communist activities as a student at Harvard in the late 1940s and after graduation, when he took jobs in two factories in Buffalo, New York, and tried to organize their workers. 

Fleeing McCarthyite America and potential prosecution, Grossman worked in the GDR with other Western defectors and eventually became, as he notes, the “only person in the world to attend Harvard and Karl Marx universities.” Later, he was able to establish himself as a freelance journalist, lecturer, and author. Traveling throughout East Germany, he evaluated the failures as well as the successes of the GDR's “socialist experiment.” He also recorded his experiences, observations, and judgments of life in East Berlin after reunification, which failed to bring about the post-Communist paradise so many had expected. 

Written with humor as well as candor, Crossing the River provides a rare look at the Cold War from the other side of the ideological divide. 

Mark Solomon, a distinguished historian of the American left, provides a historical afterword that places Grossman's experiences in a larger Cold War context.

Por medio de impresionantes ilustraciones, la autora ofrece una memoria cautivante y conmovedora de la infancia, las relaciones raciales, la etnicidad y la identidad en el sur de los Estados Unidos. 

La novela gráfico de Lila Quintero-Weaver que obtuvo amplio reconocimiento crítico. Por medio de impresionantes ilustraciones, la autora ofrece una memoria cautivante y conmovedora de la infancia, las relaciones raciales, la etnicidad y la identidad en el sur de los Estados Unidos. Sus dibujos de estilo sutil, pero efectivo, refuerzan dramáticament una sentida narración.

En 1961, cuando la autora tenía cinco años, su familia salió de Buenos Aires, Argentina, para emigrar a los Estados Unidos y establecerse en Marion, un pueblo en el corazón del Black Belt de Alabama. En una región definida por la segregación racial, la familia Quintero, por su condición de clase media educada, se halló en una situación privilegiada para observar las tensiones que minaban la cultura y la sociedad en la que vivían.

Weaver salió de constancia de lo que signifacaba ser una niña latina en una le las regiones más racistas del sur de los Estados Unidos, tratando de entender tanto un país extranjero, como el horror de las relaciones raciales de nuestra nación. Excluida de las categorías raciales empleadas por entonces, la autora observó desde muy temprana edad las desigualdades de la cultura estadounidense, regida por un ideal de belleza femenina que privilegiaba a la mujer rubia y de ojos azules. A lo largo de su vida, Weaver ha luchado por encontrar su lugar en la sociedad norteamericana cuestionando la discriminación de su entorno. Cuarto oscuro contituye su legado visual y verbal sobre esa lucha.

“As is well known, Pete is an outstanding storyteller, and this book is no exception."
—Claire Strom, Journal of Southern History

In addition to chronicling significant exhibit work at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Curating the American Past, captures the excitement inherent in researching and writing history and Pete Daniel’s efforts to prevent diluted celebratory stories from replacing the red meat of the American past.

In Curating the American Past, Pete Daniel reveals how curators collect objects, plan exhibits, and bring alive the country’s complex and exciting history. In vivid detail, Daniel recounts the exhilaration of innovative research, the joys of collaboration, and the rewards of mentoring new generations of historians. In a career distinguished by prize-winning publications and pathbreaking exhibitions, Daniel also confronted the challenges of serving as a public historian tasked with protecting a definitive American museum from the erosion of scholarly standards. Curating the American Past offers a wealth of museum wisdom, illuminating the crucial role that dedicated historians and curators serve within our most important repositories of cultural memory.

He was the winner of 511 major league baseball games, nearly a hundred more than any other pitcher. He threw three no-hitters, including the first perfect game in the new American League. He was among the original twelve players inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame, and his name is now attached to the game's most prestigious pitching award. Yet for all his accomplishments, Cy Young remains to most baseball fans a legendary but little known figure. 

In this book, Reed Browning re-creates the life of Denton True “Cyclone” Young and places his story in the context of a rapidly changing turn-of-the-century America. Born in rural Ohio, the son of a Civil War veteran, Young learned his trade at a time when only underhand pitching was permitted. When he began his professional career in 1890, pitchers wore no gloves and stood five feet closer to the batter than they do today. By the time he retired in 1911, the game of baseball had evolved into its modern form and claimed unquestioned status as America's “national pastime.” 

As Browning shows, Young's extraordinary mastery of his craft owed much to his ability to adapt to the changing nature of the game. Endowed with an exceptional fastball, he gradually developed a wide array of deliveries and pitches—all of which he could throw with astonishing control. Yet his success can also be attributed, at least in part, to the rustic values of loyalty, hard work, and fair play that he embraced and embodied, and for which he became renowned among baseball fans of his day.

Musicologist Michelle Fillion curates a collection of Mumma's writings, presenting revised versions of his classic pieces as well as many unpublished works from every stage of his storied career. Here, through words and astonishing photos, is Mumma's chronicle of seminal events in the musical world of the twentieth century: his cofounding the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music; his role in organizing the historic ONCE Festivals of Contemporary Music; performances with the Sonic Arts Union; and working alongside John Cage and David Tudor as a composer-musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In addition, Mumma describes his collaborations with composers, performers, dancers, and visual artists ranging from Robert Ashley and Pauline Oliveros to Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg.

Candid and insightful, Cybersonic Arts is the eye-opening account of a broad artistic community by an active participant and observer.