Mike Davis's brilliant exegesis attempts to answer the question: Why has the world's most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class?

This book is a story of a Brazilian woman who has always dreamed of living in the United States. Accompanied with her brothers and her daughter, she experienced the adventure and the risks of entering the United States while passing through the famous border of Mexico.The American Dream has turned into intense struggles to survive prisons, challenges of adapting to a different culture, and trying to decipher an unfamiliar language. In this work, Joelma B. tells how she overcame a kidnapping scheme by the "Coyotes" as well as the time she lived in America without her daughters, and returning to Brazil to get them.Joelma B. learns that difficulties do not erase a dream from the heart. However, the dangers, the losses, and the humiliations also made her realize that she was not born to be a prisoner of the American dream.

"Clarence Cecil 'Skippy' Adams exhibited self-reliance, ambition, ingenuity, courage and a commitment to learning. Unfortuantely, for an African American coming of age in the 1930's and 1940's, such attributes counted for little, especially if he lived in the South. Clarence Adams had another strike against him. In 1953, after spending thirty-three months as a POW during the Korean War, he chose not to return to his homeland; instead he went to China, where he spent the next 12 years of his life. After returning to the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee accused him of 'disrupting the morale of the American fighting forces in Vietmnam and inciting revolution in the U.S.' Adams vigorously denied these charges, explaining: 'I went to China because I was looking for freedom, a way out of poverty, and to be treated like a human being...."--From the preface.