In this groundbreaking work, Shorris examines the nature of poverty in America today--addressing such issues as why people are poor and why they stay poor--and offers a unique solution to the problem. Print features.

Documents the author's observations of circumstances reflected in a maximum-security prison and subsequent launch of a humanities college course for dropouts, immigrants and former inmates who eventually became high-achieving contributors to society.

"You've been cheated," Earl Shorris tells a classroom of poor people in New York City. "Rich people learn the humanities; you didn't. . . . It is generally accepted in America that the liberal arts and humanities in particular belong to the elite. I think you're the elite." In this groundbreaking work, Shorris examines the nature of poverty in America today. Why are people poor, and why do they stay poor? Shorris argues that they lack politics, or the ability to participate fully in the public world; knowing only the immediacy and oppression of force, the poor remain trapped and isolated. To test his theory, Shorris creates an experimental school teaching the humanities to poor people, giving them the means to reflect and negotiate rather than react. The results are nothing short of astonishing. Originally published in hardcover under the title New American Blues.

The first anthology in any language to represent the full trajectory of this remarkable literature.

A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. "A work of scope and profound insight into the divided soul of Mexico." —History Today The Life and Times of Mexico is a grand narrative driven by 3,000 years of history: the Indian world, the Spanish invasion, Independence, the 1910 Revolution, the tragic lives of workers in assembly plants along the border, and the experiences of millions of Mexicans who live in the United States. Mexico is seen here as if it were a person, but in the Aztec way; the mind, the heart, the winds of life; and on every page there are portraits and stories: artists, shamans, teachers, a young Maya political leader; the rich few and the many poor. Earl Shorris is ingenious at finding ways to tell this story: prostitutes in the Plaza Loreto launch the discussion of economics; we are taken inside two crucial elections as Mexico struggles toward democracy; we watch the creation of a popular "telenovela" and meet the country's greatest living intellectual. The result is a work of magnificent scope and profound insight into the divided soul of Mexico.

This is a work of great scope, a powerful illumination of an enigmatic figure. Told from the point of view of an ancient shaman, this is the dark and mystical story of Mexico's greatest revolutionary general, Pancho Villa. Shedding the Hollywood mantle of the drunken, womanizing bandit-turned-hero, the Villa who comes to life in this extraordinary novel is part man and part myth, part visionary hoodlum and part brilliant general. A troubled childhood--marked by his father's early death in the fields and his sister's rape by a local landowner--and a prophetic dream propel young Villa through a period of lawlessness and drifting and into life as a military leader. The story moves convincingly through the events of Villa's life, showing him to be a man of fierce passions and moral conviction, a natural leader for the rebellion.

Explores the lives and history of Hispanic Americans as decendants of the Spanish conquest of the native populations of the New World.