A Passage To America

On the last days of Osho, 1931-1990, in U.S.A. and India.

A Passage to America: Notes of an Adopted Son is an anecdotal autobiography of Prof. Joseph M. Cheruvelil, a naturalized citizen of the United States. Submerged in this long narrative is a social history of three generations from British subjects in India to Baby Boomers and Millennials in America. Prof. Cheruvelil, who taught many years at St. Johns University in New York, is a Catholic in religion, a Hindu in culture, a conservative in politics, and an eclectic in taste. The book abounds with succinct comments on the major issues and potentates of the world from a global perspective. Education is its primary theme, geography and history its guides, and myths and legends its images.

Katherine Grandjean shows that the English conquest of New England was not just a matter of consuming territory, of transforming woods into farms. It entailed a struggle to control the flow of information—who could travel where, what news could be sent, over which routes winding through the woods along the early American communications frontier.

History records only one peaceful transition of hegemonic power: the passage from British to American dominance of the international order. To explain why this transition was nonviolent, Kori Schake explores nine points of crisis between Britain and the U.S., from the Monroe Doctrine to the unequal “special relationship” during World War II.

Originally published in 1950, this is a comprehensive account of the peaks and troughs of migrations to America, beginning with its original formation of the nation through to the influx of Displaced Persons. Relating the American migrations to great movements in world history on the one hand, and to the national ideal of freedom on the other, the author discusses national and cultural migrations specifically—the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, Irish, Chinese, Italians, Russians, Russian Jews, and the refugees and survivors of World War II. “Stimulating reading for all young Americans, at home or in the classroom.”—Kirkus Review “Passage to America was not written as propaganda, yet its very nature makes it a weapon fitted to any hand that is raised in the fight for freedom....It is good in these days to find a book that in strong but not bitter style denounces tyranny and, without any frantic flag-waving, upholds the democratic way of Life.”—Sunday Review of Literature “A living story of the meaning of democracy. The narrative moves easily and smoothly, and the book should arouse the interest of anyone over twelve or thirteen who looks at it.”—The Horn Book

Humboldt offered the world a vision of humans & nature as integrated halves of a single whole. He espoused the idea that while the univerise of nature exists apart from human purpose, its beauty & order are human achievements. Laura Dassow Walls traces the emergence of this philosophy to Humboldt's 1799 journey to America.