Julian Nava is one of the most renowned and distinguished elder statesmen in the Hispanic community of the United States. The child of poor Mexican immigrants, Nava rose through years of hardship and hard work to achieve what no other Latino in the United States had achieved before him: Nava became the first Mexican American to serve as ambassador to Mexico. This unforeseen but deserved appointment by President Jimmy Carter followed a life of commitment to his education and that of his community. Nava became the first Mexican American to serve on the Los Angeles school board when it was embattled, facing the challenges of school walkouts and boycotts, desegregation, bilingual education, and a series of issues brought on by the changes in education during the 1970s. The recipient of a Ph.D. in History from Harvard, Nava has been on the front-lines of urban education and politics, while simultaneously building a successful career as a university professor celebrated throughout the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Spain. Navas previously untold story is finally available to inspire people, young and old, toward study, commitment and perseverance, not only for ones self, but for the community and nation.

Twentieth-century Los Angeles has been the locus of one of the most profound and complex interactions between variant cultures in American history. Yet this study is among the first to examine the relationship between ethnicity and identity among the largest immigrant group to that city. By focusing on Mexican immigrants to Los Angeles from 1900 to 1945, George J. Sánchez explores the process by which temporary sojourners altered their orientation to that of permanent residents, thereby laying the foundation for a new Mexican-American culture. Analyzing not only formal programs aimed at these newcomers by the United States and Mexico, but also the world created by these immigrants through family networks, religious practice, musical entertainment, and work and consumption patterns, Sánchez uncovers the creative ways Mexicans adapted their culture to life in the United States. When a formal repatriation campaign pushed thousands to return to Mexico, those remaining in Los Angeles launched new campaigns to gain civil rights as ethnic Americans through labor unions and New Deal politics. The immigrant generation, therefore, laid the groundwork for the emerging Mexican-American identity of their children.

Julian Nava is one of the most renowned and distinguished elder statesmen in the Hepatic community of the United States. The child of poor Mexican immigrants. Nava rose through years of hardship and hard work to achieve what no other Latino in the United States had achieved before him: Nava became the first Mexican American to serve as ambassador to Mexico.

Los Angeles Times Bestseller This riveting tour through 1960s Los Angeles is a “history from below, in the very best sense” as it celebrates the “grassroots heroes and struggles” of the social movements of the era (Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Natural Causes). “Authoritative and impressive.” —Los Angeles Times “Monumental.” —Guardian Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power—where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture. Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors’ storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis’s award-winning L.A. history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose.