A historical and current look at Puerto Rico, discussing the land, the government, the culture, the people, and the economy.

Photographic guide and text to birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

Since the 1968 World Amateur Surfing Championships were held in Rincon, Puerto Rico has been on the international map of world-class surfing destinations. But it wasn't until photographer Steve Fitzpatrick relocated to San Juan in 1992 that the island's outstanding surf conditions and culture had a dedicated documentarian. Steve has spent the last two decades chasing nearly every swell with his camera, and has now distilled the absolute best images into this collection of more than 270 images. Pulled from an archive of more than 50,000 captures, this dramatic group of images presents the best surf Puerto Rico has to offer and the talented, athletic personalities that relentlessly harness its awesome power. Complete with images of the island's stunning natural beauty and a scientific analysis of Puerto Rico's well-endowed oceanographic situation, hardcore surfers and non-surfers alike will be impressed by this stunning work.

JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • Over 90 delicious, deeply personal recipes that tell the story of Puerto Rico's Stateside diaspora from the United States' first Puerto Rican food columnist, award-winning writer Illyanna Maisonet. “A delicious journey through purpose, place, and the power of food that you won’t want to miss.”—José Andrés, chef, cookbook author, and founder of World Central Kitchen ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Simply Recipes ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Saveur, Smithsonian Magazine, Delish, Vice Illyanna Maisonet spent years documenting her family’s Puerto Rican recipes and preserving the island’s disappearing foodways through rigorous, often bilingual research. In Diasporican, she shares over 90 recipes, some of which were passed down from her grandmother and mother—classics such as Tostones, Pernil, and Arroz con Gandules, as well as Pinchos with BBQ Guava Sauce, Rabbit Fricassee with Chayote, and Flan de Queso. In this visual record of Puerto Rican food, ingredients, and techniques, Illyanna traces the island’s flavor traditions to the Taino, Spanish, African, and even United States' cultures that created it. These dishes, shaped by geography, immigration, and colonization, reflect the ingenuity and diversity of their people. Filled with travel and food photography, Diasporican reveals how food connects us to family, history, conflict, and migration.

"My Moms was a good person. She cared, but she just couldn't hack us no more. She kept saying she gonna kill herself, too. The day she died, she told me that my father hit her, and I told her, That was good for you, for not cooking for him. And she left. I didn't know she took the pills, though. The next day, they told me she was dead."--Pistol This searing portrait of inner-city life takes us inside one of America's deadly urban battlefronts--the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Alphabet City on New York's Lower East Side. With unnerving clarity, Geoffrey Biddle shows us the people who live there, summoning their spirit against the brutalizing conditions of poverty, joblessness, drugs, crime, and violence. Capturing life in this ghetto on film and in words with rawness and compassion, he shows the human toll of impoverishment and neglect. In 1977 Geoffrey Biddle photographed the residents of Alphabet City for the first time. Ten years later, he returned to this same area and photographed many of the same people again, this time also interviewing them. Alphabet City is the result of those encounters. While the stories are unique, they coalesce into a single tale all the more jarring for the matter-of-fact tone in which it is told. There is Ariel, whose dreams of becoming a boxer were destroyed when he contracted AIDS. And Linda, raising three sons while sleeping in the street, hungry and drug-addicted. There are also tales of human resilience like Richard's, a defiant former gang member who now attends college. These stories belong not only to one New York neighborhood, but to urban ghettos across the United States. Framed by Miguel Algarn's compelling introduction and dramatized by the speakers' own testimony, Geoffrey Biddle's photographs are haunting portrayals of a ravaged community battling ineffectually against deprivation and betrayal. This book forces us to see faces and to hear voices that won't be easy to forget, and yet which in the end are not so different from our own. "My Moms was a good person. She cared, but she just couldn't hack us no more. She kept saying she gonna kill herself, too. The day she died, she told me that my father hit her, and I told her, That was good for you, for not cooking for him. And she left. I didn't know she took the pills, though. The next day, they told me she was dead."--Pistol This searing portrait of inner-city life takes us inside one of America's deadly urban battlefronts--the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Alphabet City on New York's Lower East Side. With unnerving clarity, Geoffrey Biddle shows us the people who live there, summoning their spirit against the brutalizing conditions of poverty, joblessness, drugs, crime, and violence. Capturing life in this ghetto on film and in words with rawness and compassion, he shows the human toll of impoverishment and neglect. In 1977 Geoffrey Biddle photographed the residents of Alphabet City for the first time. Ten years later, he returned to this same area and photographed many of the same people again, this time also interviewing them. Alphabet City is the result of those encounters. While the stories are unique, they coalesce into a single tale all the more jarring for the matter-of-fact tone in which it is told. There is Ariel, whose dreams of becoming a boxer were destroyed when he contracted AIDS. And Linda, raising three sons while sleeping in the street, hungry and drug-addicted. There are also tales of human resilience like Richard's, a defiant former gang member who now attends college. These stories belong not only to one New York neighborhood, but to urban ghettos across the United States. Framed by Miguel Algarn's compelling introduction and dramatized by the speakers' own testimony, Geoffrey Biddle's photographs are haunting portrayals of a ravaged community battling ineffectually against deprivation and betrayal. This book forces us to see faces and to hear voices that won't be easy to forget, and yet which in the end are not so different from our own.

"All photographs dated 1941 or 1942 are from the FSA Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The photographs dated 1946 are from the collection of the General Archives of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in San Juan, Puerto Rico. All other photographs are from the photographer's own collection"--Title page verso.