History : Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies)

One of the most popular and enduring legacies of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, Project Head Start continues to support young children of low-income families-close to one million annually-by providing a range of developmental and educational services. Yet as Head Start reaches its fortieth anniversary, debates over the function and scope of this federal program persist. Although the program's importance is unquestioned across party lines, the direction of its future—whether toward a greater focus on school readiness and literacy or the continuation of a holistic approach-remains a point of contention.Policymakers proposing to reform Head Start often invoke its origins to justify their position, but until now no comprehensive political history of the program has existed. Maris A. Vinovskis here provides an in-depth look at the nation's largest and best known—yet politically challenged—early education program. The Birth of Head Start sets the record straight on the program's intended aims, documenting key decisions made during its formative years. While previous accounts of Head Start have neglected the contributions of important participants such as federal education officials and members of Congress, Vinovskis's history is the first to consider the relationship between politics and policymaking and how this interaction has shaped the program. This thorough and incisive book will be essential for policymakers and legislators interested in prekindergarten education and will inform future discussions on early intervention services for disadvantaged children. more...

Price: $20.00

After the Civil War, Congress required ten former Confederate states to rewrite their constitutions before they could be readmitted to the Union. An electorate composed of newly enfranchised former slaves, native southern whites (minus significant numbers of disenfranchised former Confederate officials), and a small contingent of "carpetbaggers," or outside whites, sent delegates to ten constitutional conventions. Derogatorily labeled "black and tan" by their detractors, these assemblies wrote constitutions and submitted them to Congress and to the voters in their respective states for approval. Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags offers a quantitative study of these decisive but little-understood assemblies—the first elected bodies in the United States to include a significant number of blacks. Richard L. Hume and Jerry B. Gough scoured manuscript census returns to determine the age, occupation, property holdings, literacy, and slaveholdings of 839 of the conventions' 1,018 delegates. Carefully analyzing convention voting records on certain issues—including race, suffrage, and government structure—they correlate delegates' voting patterns with their racial and socioeconomic status. The authors then assign a "Republican support score" to each delegate who voted often enough to count, establishing the degree to which each delegate adhered to the Republican leaders' program at his convention. Using these scores, they divide the delegates into three groups—radicals, swing voters, and conservatives—and incorporate their quantitative findings into the narrative histories of each convention, providing, for the first time, a detailed analysis of these long-overlooked assemblies. Hume and Gough's comprehensive study offers an objective look at the accomplishments and shortcomings of the conventions and humanizes the delegates who have until now been understood largely as stereotypes. Blacks, Carpetbagge more...

Price: $65.00

The history of the Aztecs has been haunted by the spectre of human sacrifice. Reinvesting the Aztecs with a humanity frequently denied to them, and exploring their spectacular religious violence as a comprehensible element of life, this book integrates a fresh interpretation of gender with an innovative study of the everyday life of the Aztecs. more...

Price: $75.00

Introduction: Why Read About Brazil?. CHAPTER 1. BIRTH AND GROWTH OF COLONIAL BRAZIL: 1500-1750. The Country the Portuguese Created in the New World. The Colonial Economy and Society. Miscegenation: Biological and Cultural. The Beginnings of a Luso-Brazilian Culture. CHAPTER 2. CRISIS OF THE COLONIAL SYSTEM AND EMERGENCE OF AN INDEPENDENT BRAZIL: 1790-1830. The Economics and Politics of Post-1750 Brazil. The Portuguese Court Comes to Brazil. CHAPTER 3. REVOLT, CONSOLIDATION, AND WAR: 1830-1870. Uprisings under the Regency. Recentralization. The Role of Pedro II. The Rise of Coffee. The Emerging Problems with Slavery as an Institution. The Question of Abolition. The Paraguayan War. CHAPTER 4. MAKING BRAZIL "MODERN": 1870-1910. The End of the Empire. Coffee Fluctuations, Emerging Industry, and Urban Labor. CHAPTER 5. WORLD WAR I, THE GREAT DEPRESSION, AND DICTATORSHIP: 1910-1945. The Shock of World War I. New Currents in the 1920's. The Revolution of 1930. Getulio Vargas as Dictator. CHAPTER 6. DEMOCRACY UNDER VARGAS, HALCYON DAYS WITH KUBITSCHEK, AND A MILITARY COUP: 1945-1964. The 1945 Election and the Dutra Period Vargas Returns. A Socioeconomic Profile of Brazil in the Late 1940s and 1950s. A New President, Juscelino Kubitschek, Elected. The Brief Presidency of Janio Guadros. The Succession of Joao Goulart. CHAPTER 7. RULE OF THE MILITARY: 1964-1985. The Generals Search for a Political Base. The Arrival of the Guerrillas. Culture and the Generals. The Economic "Miracle" Wrought by the Authoritarians. The Road to Redemocratization. CHAPTER 8. REDEMOCRATIZATION; NEW HOPE, OLD PROBLEMS: 1985-. Sarney and His Challenges. The Debt Crisis and the Economy. Widening Gaps Between Rich and Poor. Public Health: The Fish That Swam Upstream. Changes Affecting Women. Race Relations. The Political Spectrum in the New Democracy. The Collor Debacle. Another Vice-President in Command. Back to Stabilization: The Plano Real. The Presidential Election of 1994. more...

Price: $15.00

Multidisciplinary encyclopedia of the impacts of the close ties between Britain and the whole of the Americas, examining Britain's cultural and political legacy to the nations of the New World, and how the Americas have in turn influenced contemporary Britain. more...

Price: $270.00