Twenty-five celebrated Latino writers delight and move us with their recollections of Christmas in this splendid holiday extravaganza.
From Julia Alvarez’s tale of how Santicló delivered a beloved uncle from political oppression to Junot Díaz’s story of his own uneasy assimilation on his first Christmas in America, to Sandra Cisneros’s poignant memories of her late father’s holiday dinners, Las Christmas gives us true stories from writers of many traditions – memories of Christmas and Hanukkah that vividly capture the pride and pain, joy and heartbreak, that so often accompany the holidays in the Americas.
Richly illustrated and embellished with songs and poems, along with recipes for an unforgettable Christmas dinner – from traditional sweet tamales to Puerto Rican asopao (stew) and coquito (coconut eggnog) – this is an enduring treasury of Latino writing to read again and again.
Caught up in the pandemonium of carnival, the roguish and irresponsible Vadinho dos Guimaraes dies during a parade, leaving behind his long suffering wife, the irrepressible Dona Flor. As a widow, Flor devotes herself to her cooking school and an assortment of interfering but well-meaning friends who urge her to remarry. The lonely widow finds herself attracted to Dr. Teodoro Madureria, a kind, considerate pharmacist, who is everything the reckless Vadinho was not. Yet after their marriage, though content, Flor longs for her first husband’s amorous, and exhausting, sensual pleasures. And Flor’s desirous longing is so powerful that it brings the ghost of Vadinho back from the grave – right into her bed. 
Since the atomic bomb made its first appearance on the world stage in 1945, it has been clear that we possess the power to destroy our own planet. What nuclear weapons made possible, the global environmental crisis, marked especially by global warming, has now made inevitable – if business as usual continues.
Rain of Gold is a fascinating tale following the paths of two families forced to flee Mexico during the Revolution. It is a story rich with culture, family, and spirit. It is also filled with the tragic realities of a country torn by war, and the life of immigrants in the USA.
A young girl arrives in Tora, a city in the Colombian forest, wild and unkempt and determined to become a puta. Secretive about her past, refusing to reveal even her name, she is adopted by the aging prostitute Todos los Santos, who transforms her into the bewitching and beautiful Sayonara. Sayonara’s beauty and aloofness inspire legendary status among the petroleros of the Tropical Oil Company, men who live for their monthly pilgrimages to Tora.
Rusty Young was backpacking in South America when he heard about Thomas McFadden, a convicted English drug trafficker who ran tours inside Bolivia’s notorious San Pedro prison. Intrigued, the young Australian journalist went to La Paz and joined one of Thomas’s illegal tours. They formed an instant friendship and then became partners in an attempt to record Thomas’s experiences in the jail. Rusty bribed the guards to allow him to stay and for the next three months he lived inside the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas and recording one of the strangest and most compelling prison stories of all time. The result is Marching Powder.
On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the forty-five original passengers and crew, only sixteen made it off the mountain alive. For ten excruciating weeks they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, they were forced to do what would have once been unthinkable….
Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, tells of his exasperation with colleagues who try to play both sides of the street: looking to science for justification of their religious convictions while evading the most difficult implications – the existence of a prime mover sophisticated enough to create and run the universe, “to say nothing of mind reading millions of humans simultaneously.” Such an entity, he argues, would have to be extremely complex, raising the question of how it came into existence, how it communicates – through spiritons! – and where it resides. Dawkins is frequently dismissed as a bully, but he is only putting theological doctrines to the same kind of scrutiny that any scientific theory must withstand. Dawkins systematically peels away at the onion of blind faith by injecting wisdom through a logical and a rational process. A must read.
Humanity in the twenty-first century is facing what might be described as its ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of the climate that has nurtured human civilization and with it the basis of life on earth as we know it. All ecosystems on the planet are now in decline. Enormous rifts have been driven through the delicate fabric of the biosphere. The economy and the earth are headed for a fateful collision—if we don’t alter course.
Book of Green, the free eco living directory full of green and ethical businesses, confirms the strength and prosperity of the green sector. Despite the recession Book of Green has launched a larger edition of the paperback eco-directory, doubled its print run, and gone digital, launching an iPhone app.