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The 2016 election saw more Latino votes than the record voter turnout of the 2012 election. The essays in this volume provide a highly detailed analysis of the state and national impact Latino voters had in what will be remembered as one of the biggest surprises in presidential election history. Contrary to much commentary, Latino voters increased their participation rates in all states beyond the supposed peak levels that they attained in 2012. Moreover, they again displayed their overwhelming support of Democratic candidates and even improved their Democratic support in Florida. Nonetheless, their continued presence and participation in national elections was not sufficient to prevent the election of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate who vilified Latinos and especially Latino immigrants. Each essay provides insights as to how these two competing realities coexist, while the conclusion addresses the implications of this coexistence for the future of Latinos in American politics.

Nevada Wolf Pack football coach Chris Ault is unlike any other college football coach in history. He spent his entire coaching career, from 1976 to 2012, at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he elevated a football program with very little notoriety onto the national stage, winning 234 games and earning a place in the College Football Hall of Fame. Ault’s innovative “Pistol” offense, established in the 2004–2005 season, revolutionized college football and ushered in its modern high-scoring offensive style. 

Yet perhaps beyond the offensive genius Ault brought to the college game, he was also a masterful showman. He built interest in a previously moribund program with publicity stunts like inviting military tanks into Mackay Stadium and having them blast non-live rounds into the sky whenever the Wolf Pack scored a touchdown. He wrote victory songs for the Wolf Pack to sing in the locker room following every win. His teams marched through downtown Reno in military formation while wearing full game uniforms. He delivered stirring halftime speeches that led to improbable comebacks, including the single greatest football comeback in NCAA history. He found common personal ground with young Wolf Pack athletes and developed talent like Colin Kaepernick, who developed into one of the greatest college quarterbacks the sport had ever seen. 

Through his unconventional coaching methods, his fervent belief that the University of Nevada, Reno, was the finest institution of higher learning in the land, and his innate, creative, and intuitive understanding of how a winning football program can unite people, Ault brought the people of Northern Nevada together in a way that no one has replicated since. Chris Ault was the rare college football coach who came to campus as a starting quarterback, stayed throughout his career as a coach, and left a mark that will never be equaled.

Blake's adventurous essays—her Letters from Togo—are based on the letters she wrote to her friends from Lomé, the West African capital where she spent a Fulbright year teaching American literature from 1983 to 1984. As Blake begins the process of making sense out of a vibrant, seeming anarchy, we are pulled along with her into the heart of Togo—a tiny dry strip of a country no one can even find on a map.

With her delightful prose and insight for detail Blake introduces us to Mahouna, her housekeeper, who runs a cold drink business from his refrigerator in a country where electricity is unreliable; to American Lee Ann and her Togolese family, who works at the American school to earn the fees for a private education for her children; and to the suave René, wearing silk shirts and a most seductive smile, who teeters on the edge of the Togolese and expatriate worlds.

Since Lomé is both an overgrown village and a cosmopolitan city, Blake's exhilarating, often humorous experiences range from buying a car to attending a traditional tom-tom funeral, from visiting people who hunt with bows and arrows to enduring faculty meetings, from negotiating the politics of buying produce to lecturing on Afro-American literature at the English Club. Together, her enlivening letters trace the pattern of adjusting to a foreign environment and probe the connections between Africa and this curious, energetic American. Not "out of Africa" but within it, they take advantage of time and perspective to penetrate the universal experience of being a stranger in a strange land.