Miles and Memories is a collection of articles which were written mostly over the last decade on childhood memories, essays, stories, routine obstacles of the common man and on numerous national issues. The multidimensional aspects of the society in terms of social and cultural heritages and economic power corridors are mostly the theme of the articles. Some of the real-life incidents at IIT Bombay laid the foundation of this book, which were later extended to various contemporary issues and topics. It is a mix of the old and the new. This book is an attempt to bring a balanced view of India in the lens of the authors. It is an attempt to awake we – the people – who can bring progressive changes in the society!

The Norte Grande of Chile, the world's driest desert, had ''engendered contemporary Chile, everything that was good about it, everything that was dreadful,'' writes Ariel Dorfman in his brilliant exploration of one of the least known and most exotic corners of the globe. For 10,000 years the desert had been mined for silver, iron, and copper, but it was the 19th-century discovery of nitrate that transformed the country into a modern state and forced the desert's colonization. The mines' riches generated mansions and oligarchs in Chile's more temperate region—and terrible inequalities throughout the country. The Norte Grande also gave birth to the first Chilean democratic and socialist movements, nurturing every major political figure of modern Chile from Salvador Allende to Augusto Pinochet. In this richly layered personal memoir, illustrated with the author's own photographs, Dorfman sets out to explore the origins of contemporary Chile—and, along the way, seek out his wife's European ancestors who came years ago to Chile as part of the nitrate rush. And, most poignantly, he looks for traces of his friend and fellow 1960s activist, Freddy Taberna, executed by a firing squad in a remote Pinochet death camp.

THE YEAR 1932 The Great Depression was in full force. The stock crashed on October 29, 1929. It was also the year most members of the Riverside High School class of 1950 were born. A brief look back reveals what our great country, and the world, looked like. As the year 1932 began Herbert Hoover was the President. He would lose the election in November to Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Roosevelt would serve as president during most of the formative years of our young lives. He served through the Great Depression and World War II. He died in 1945 and was succeeded by Harry S. Truman. Some National and International events, in the world of politics and sports: Adolph Hitler was coming to power, the atrocities he committed, war in Europe and WWII, were on the horizon. The Walt Disney Art School is created The tenth Summer Olympic Games open in Los Angeles New York Yankees win the World Series (so this is news) The Indianapolis 500 winner is Fred Frame with a speed of 104.144 MPH This is a peek into the year of 1932. There was certainly a great deal of exciting, powerful, and spectacular events during the year. Strictly from an unbiased point of view none of these events matched the birth of all those little babies that were destined to be the Class of 1950!

In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. "Dark tourism" often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic "Old South" narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.

Ash is still falling from the sky two years after a series of globally devastating volcanic eruptions. Sunlight is as scarce as food, and cities are becoming increasingly violent as people loot and kill in order to maintain their existence. Sixteen-year-old Miles Newell knows that the only chance his family has of surviving is to escape from their Minneapolis suburban home to their cabin in the woods, As the Newells travel the highways on Miles' supreme invention, the Ali Princess, they have high hopes for safety and peace. But as they venture deeper into the wilderness, they begin to realize that it's not only city folk who have changed for the worse.

Bringing together an unprecedented number of extensive personal stories, this book shares the triumphs and heartbreaking moments experienced by some of the first Cubans to come to the United States after Fidel Castro took power in 1959.