With opinions and personal testimonies from the artists themselves, this book takes a detailed look at the huge impact that Mexican music and culture has had--and continues to have--on Country music in its various forms. This very American form of cultural expression has changed over the last few years, but Mexico--with its bordertowns, beaches, colonial architecture and ancient ruins conjuring up a range of powerful images--has remained an influential presence in Nashville, Texas, and even places like Australia and South Africa. Featuring contributions from Merle Haggard, Jimmy Buffett, Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam, Jessi Colter, Johnny Rodriguez and Flaco Jimenez, this book reveals the unique and largely undocumented relationship between "America's Music" and Mexico.

Manuel Romeros’ exhaustive research of the lives of his mother and father unearth a detailed and panoramic vision of Northern New Mexican history. But it is the Romero/Madrid family story that is the centerpiece of the volume. Their unbreakable bonds and lasting community will stay with the reader long after all the pages are turned.” – Governor Bill Richardson “The soul of the book is found in Manuel Romero’s reflections on his childhood in northern New Mexico and later, the Salt Lake Valley and through his personal experiences and observations. “Mi America: The Evolution of An American Family” was not only a delight to read but also provides a vivid and insightful understanding of this significant culture.” - Jim Bradley, Salt Lake County Council Member Mi America, his well-chronicled family journey ---from Spain to Mexico to New Mexico to Utah---is an important contribution to the history of America and the significant impact made by Nuevomejcanos over hundreds of years. Readers will be informed, uplifted and inspired---The Honorable Mickey Ibarra. “Mí América is a family history warmly placed in context—context of place and (Spain to Mexico to New Mexico), of culture, of religion, of language, of commitment to service. Engaging and inspirational.”—Former U.S. Senator Fred Harris, University of New Mexico Professor Emeritus of Political Science. The new book, Mi América: The Evolution of an American Family explores the history of the author’s own quintessential yet unique Mexican American family. The book is a major accomplishment for a Chicano Civil Rights activist, civic leader, non-profit executive, and professor. If you listen closely, you can hear the strains of alabados in the background blended with “Europa” by Carlos Santana. Dr. Theresa Martínez, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah.

Global Popular Music: A Research and Information Guide offers an essential annotated bibliography of scholarship on popular music around the world in a two-volume set. Featuring a broad range of subjects, people, cultures, and geographic areas, and spanning musical genres such as traditional, folk, jazz, rock, reggae, samba, rai, punk, hip-hop, and many more, this guide highlights different approaches and discussions within global popular music research. This research guide is comprehensive in scope, providing a vital resource for scholars and students approaching the vast amount of publications on popular music studies and popular music traditions around the world. Thorough cross-referencing and robust indexes of genres, places, names, and subjects make the guide easy to use. Volume 2, Transnational Discourses of Global Popular Music Studies, covers the geographical areas of North America: United States and Canada; Central America, Caribbean, and South America/Latin America; Europe; Africa and Middle East; Asia; and areas of Oceania: Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Islands. It provides over twenty-four hundred annotated bibliographic entries covering discourses of extensive research that extend beyond the borders of the United States and includes annotated entries to books, book series, book chapters, edited volumes, special documentaries and programming, scholarly journal essays, and other resources that focus on the creative and artistic flows of global popular music.

From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014 Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade each other? By confronting pain—real and imagined, her own and others'—Jamison uncovers a personal and cultural urgency to feel. She draws from her own experiences of illness and bodily injury to engage in an exploration that extends far beyond her life, spanning wide-ranging territory—from poverty tourism to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration—in its search for a kind of sight shaped by humility and grace.

This is a portfolio of 87 drawings by the Appalachian pencil artist Willard Gayheart dating from the early 1970s to the present. The book features information about each drawing taken from interviews with the artist and the owners of the art. Additionally, the book contains information about the artist's life and music and where his art can be found in the region.

A laugh-out-loud travel memoir that reveals backpacking’s awkward side. Sue, a disenchanted waitress, embarks upon a year-long quest around the world with her friend, Sara—who’s exasperatingly perfect. Expecting a whimsical jaunt of self-discovery, Sue instead encounters an absurd series of misadventures that render her embarrassed, terrified, and queasy (and in a lot of trouble with Philippine Airlines). Whether she’s fleeing from ravenous lions, dancing amid smoking skulls, trekking Annapurna underprepared, or (accidentally) drugging an Englishman, Sue’s quick-witted, self-deprecating narrative might just inspire you to take your own chaotic adventure.