When the United States took control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the wake of the Spanish-American War, it declared that it would transform its new colonies through lessons in self-government and the ways of American-style democracy. In both territories, U.S. colonial officials built extensive public school systems, and they set up American-style elections and governmental institutions. The officials aimed their lessons in democratic government at the political elite: the relatively small class of the wealthy, educated, and politically powerful within each colony. While they retained ultimate control for themselves, the Americans let the elite vote, hold local office, and formulate legislation in national assemblies. American Empire and the Politics of Meaning is an examination of how these efforts to provide the elite of Puerto Rico and the Philippines a practical education in self-government played out on the ground in the early years of American colonial rule, from 1898 until 1912. It is the first systematic comparative analysis of these early exercises in American imperial power. The sociologist Julian Go unravels how American authorities used “culture” as both a tool and a target of rule, and how the Puerto Rican and Philippine elite received, creatively engaged, and sometimes silently subverted the Americans’ ostensibly benign intentions. Rather than finding that the attempt to transplant American-style democracy led to incommensurable “culture clashes,” Go assesses complex processes of cultural accommodation and transformation. By combining rich historical detail with broader theories of meaning, culture, and colonialism, he provides an innovative study of the hidden intersections of political power and cultural meaning-making in America’s earliest overseas empire.

Publisher description.

The powerful, untold story of the 1950 revolution in Puerto Rico and the long history of U.S. intervention on the island, that the New York Times says "could not be more timely." In 1950, after over fifty years of military occupation and colonial rule, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico staged an unsuccessful armed insurrection against the United States. Violence swept through the island: assassins were sent to kill President Harry Truman, gunfights roared in eight towns, police stations and post offices were burned down. In order to suppress this uprising, the US Army deployed thousands of troops and bombarded two towns, marking the first time in history that the US government bombed its own citizens. Nelson A. Denis tells this powerful story through the controversial life of Pedro Albizu Campos, who served as the president of the Nationalist Party. A lawyer, chemical engineer, and the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard Law School, Albizu Campos was imprisoned for twenty-five years and died under mysterious circumstances. By tracing his life and death, Denis shows how the journey of Albizu Campos is part of a larger story of Puerto Rico and US colonialism. Through oral histories, personal interviews, eyewitness accounts, congressional testimony, and recently declassified FBI files, War Against All Puerto Ricans tells the story of a forgotten revolution and its context in Puerto Rico's history, from the US invasion in 1898 to the modern-day struggle for self-determination. Denis provides an unflinching account of the gunfights, prison riots, political intrigue, FBI and CIA covert activity, and mass hysteria that accompanied this tumultuous period in Puerto Rican history.

Lou Baumgaertner was born and bred in New York City, and although he also lived amongst the Border States, and even in the South, he was a New York Yankee to his dying day. Part of that, of course, could be attributed to his being a die-hard fan of the best baseball team in the world, the New York Yankees. But being a New York Yankee also meant so much more New Yorkers tend to be different from those who live in other regions, and frequently are easily recognized by others as either being different, or more precisely as being from New York. Sometimes that recognition is not accompanied by a warm feeling of acceptance. But we New Yorkers know we are different. We have our own accent although those who live in New York City might argue its all the others who have accents we speak perfectly normally. Because we live in a Big City, we talk fast, we seem brusque, and we sometimes appear to lack patience with others. We dont mean to be rude, but the demands of surviving in a Big City (almost any Big City) require a no-nonsense attitude to life to avoid being run over by those around us. But once you get to know us, were pretty nice people. We New Yorkers are proud of ourselves, and of our city, and we have a right to be. It may not be the Capital of the Country, but many New Yorkers often think of it as such to a true New Yorker, there is only one New York City! And New York City is the Business and Cultural Capital of the Country! This ubiquitous sentiment is why New Yorkers are so often accused of not playing well with the other kids on the block. And New Yorkers are definitely Yankees. No one should argue with that point. We live well above the Mason-Dixon Line. We fought for the North during the Civil War. And although there are others who can rightly and proudly also proclaim themselves as being Yankees, these other Northerners dont also happen to have the best baseball team in the world residing in their city, now do they? And so, by way of example, lets take a look at one particular New York Yankee. Lou Baumgaertner was a War Baby, born in the Bronx during the First World War. He spent his childhood in the Bronx and Corona during the Roaring Twenties, and began to mature in Corona and Manhattan during the Great Depression. He worked in Manhattan for years, but eventually got an opportunity for a new career in radio-communications in Louisville, KY. He tried to avoid induction into the military as World War II geared up, but eventually found that no one who could hold a rifle and shoot straight was going to miss the opportunity to serve his Uncle Sam. Like so many of his generation, the Second World War finished the maturing process, and put a fine polish on the person he had become. Here then are his adventures, in New York City, during World War II, and amongst the Border States, during the 20th Century.

Coloring book of the children's classic, Un coquí de Boriquén con los Reyes a Belén.