In the first detailed analysis of the program by a Western scholar, Thomas Bernstein presents carefully documented information on the mobilization of youths in the cities, the problems they have encountered in adapting to life among the peasants, the contribution they have actually made to rural development, and the policy disputes that have arisen over the program.

What does it mean to bring progress—schools, electricity, roads, running water—to paradise? Can our consumer culture and desire to “do good” really be good for a community that has survived contentedly for centuries without us? In October 2008, climbing expedition leader and attorney, Jeffrey Rasley, led a trek to a village in a remote valley in the Solu region of Nepal named Basa. His group of three adventurers was only the third group of white people ever seen in this village of subsistence farmers. What he found was a people thoroughly unaffected by Western consumer-culture values. They had no running water, electricity, or anything that moves on wheels. Each family lived in a beautiful, hand-chiseled stone house with a flower garden. Beyond what they already had, it seemed all they wanted was education for the children. He helped them finish a school building already in progress, and then they asked for help getting electricity to their village. Bringing Progress to Paradise describes Rasley’s transformation from adventurer to committed philanthropist. We are attracted to the simpler way of life in these communities, and we are changed by our experience of it. They are attracted to us, because we bring economic benefits. Bringing Progress to Paradise offers Rasley’s critical reflection on the tangled relationship between tourists and locals in “exotic” locales and the effect of Western values on some of the most remote locations on earth.

Reproduction of the original: The Complete Works of Count Tolstoi by Leo Tolstoi

Alice Bullock says, "We can't go back." Thomas Wolfe said it and has been quoted ever since. Yet it bears repetition, especially today and in reference to Alice Bullock's Mountain Villages of New Mexico. Times change and as Bullock laments in this book of memoirs, commentaries and anecdotes, it is too late to do much about it except what she herself has done: write it down. We can't go back...we can only, hopefully, remember. And that is what this book does for all of us who have either lived in a mountain village or dreamed of living in one. This collection of tales of Cimarron, Lamy, Galisteo, Wagon Mound, Watrous, Rayado and other northern New Mexico towns and locales makes a perfect companion to her book "Living Legends of the Santa Fe Country," also from Sunstone Press. Alice is also the author of "Loretto and the Miraculous Staircase" and "Monumental Ghosts," both from Sunstone Press. Includes Teacher's Manual.

Montenero Val Cocchiara is usually referred to simply as Montenero, or Mundunur in the local dialect. Montenero is a typical mountain village on the border of the Abruzzo and Molise regions, but it is more than that. Its history was tinted by contacts with numerous powerful groups over many centuries. The village and its people prove to be unique, but they also are highly embued with elements common to all in South Italy. Of course it is the hope of the author that anyone with roots in South Italy will benefit from reading this book. However, his much greater aspiration is that others will equally enjoy the story of Montenero as a metaphor of their own ancestral village or town, regardless of country or even see the village as a microcosm of the world where the forces of history and culture forge the character of people.