They were called the Back Alley Boys and best define the North Side of Syracuse, New York during the '50s and '60s. Although not as legendary as the "Dead End Kids" portrayed in the movies of the 1930s, they had their own flare for drama. But North Side story is not just a story about growing up on the North Side in the '50s and '60s. It is also a story of a changing neighborhood. Names like Stretch, Axle, Scams, and Boogers are now gone. Today the North Side residents have names like Cuong, Danh, and Ai'. Just as the immigrant grandparents of the Back Alley Boys had once struggled to come to this country, so did the Vietnamese "boatpeople." North Side story is their story as well.

Northside Story, rich with affirmations and positive analogies that exist between nature and humanity, may help children cope with the struggles in their own lives. Northside Story is a unique twist on a timeless love story about two kids from opposite sides of the tracks. One is manor-raised on the south side, and the other struggles daily for survival on the north side of the gardeners shed. Nature provides the characters and the setting, which allows young children their first opportunity to understand lifes issues through the great outdoors. It offers them perspectives that can enhance their feelings of confidence and well-being. Ive used flowers and weeds and the landscape to teach lessons about love and acceptance. The story strives to introduce them to Pandoras final gifthope.

"An original and significant contribution to Puerto Rican, Latino, and Latin American studies, drawing on the perspective of ordinary men and women. Gina Pérez's fine work is based on intensive research in two distant but interconnected places, conducted by a perceptive and sensitive observer-participant, herself immersed in two languages, cultures, and nations. Clearly written and cogently argued, her book will be of great interest to students of migration, ethnicity, and gender."—Jorge Duany, author of The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States "In this fresh, textured, original, multi-sited ethnography, Pérez traces the changing ways that Puerto Ricans have experienced poverty, displacement, and discrimination, and how they imagine and build deeply rooted but transnational lives through the extended families, dense social networks, and meaningful communities. Pérez exposes the limits of citizenship for racialized minorities; the contradictory, constrained agency in community mobilizations and urban uprisings; and the often-failed promise of transnational migration as a place to build a counter-hegemonic political space."—Brett Williams, Professor of Anthropology, American University "This is a fascinating account of transnational migration as survival strategy, one bound up in kin, region, and economic restructuring."—Vicki L. Ruiz, author of From Out of the Shadows

New in Paper Allegheny City, known today as Pittsburgh's North Side, was the third-largest city in Pennsylvania when it was controversially annexed by the City of Pittsburgh in 1907. Dan Rooney, a longtime North Side resident, joins local historian Carol Peterson in creating this highly engaging history of the cultural, industrial, and architectural achievements of Allegheny City from its humble beginnings until the present day. The authors cover the history of the city from its origins as a colonial outpost to its emergence alongside Pittsburgh as one of the most important industrial cities in the world. Supplemented by historic and contemporary photos, the authors take the reader on a fascinating and often surprising street-level tour of this colorful, vibrant, and proud place.

Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That's when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he's just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away.