La Pinta

In this groundbreaking study based on archival research about Chicana and Chicano prisoners—known as Pintas and Pintos—as well as fresh interpretations of works by renowned Pinta and Pinto authors and activists, B. V. Olguín provides crucial insights into the central roles that incarceration and the incarcerated have played in the evolution of Chicana/o history, cultural paradigms, and oppositional political praxis. This is the first text on prisoners in general, and Chicana/o and Latina/o prisoners in particular, that provides a range of case studies from the nineteenth century to the present. Olguín places multiple approaches in dialogue through the pairing of representational figures in the history of Chicana/o incarceration with specific themes and topics. Case studies on the first nineteenth-century Chicana prisoner in San Quentin State Prison, Modesta Avila; renowned late-twentieth-century Chicano poets Raúl Salinas, Ricardo Sánchez, and Jimmy Santiago Baca; lesser-known Chicana pinta and author Judy Lucero; and infamous Chicano drug baron and social bandit Fred Gómez Carrasco are aligned with themes from popular culture such as prisoner tattoo art and handkerchief art, Hollywood Chicana/o gangxploitation and the prisoner film American Me, and prisoner education projects. Olguín provides a refreshing critical interrogation of Chicana/o subaltern agency, which too often is celebrated as unambiguously resistant and oppositional. As such, this study challenges long-held presumptions about Chicana/o cultures of resistance and proposes important explorations of the complex and contradictory relationship between Chicana/o agency and ideology.

The exciting historical novel by Howard Headworth takes us to the 1480s in Spain. For the Spaniards it is the dawn of the golden age of the country. For the moors of Al-Andalus in the south, it is the beginning of a bitter harvest. And Far west, a new world beckons..... Glorious descriptions of battles and conflicts, the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, the tracing of historical events leading to the entrance of the Catholic monarchs in Granada in 1492, a panoply of characters, profiles of the traditions and skills of the Muslim peasants in Al-Andalus, and finally the first voyage of Christopher Columbus to the Indies, make this book a unique treasure. Howard Headworth lives in Almeria, Spain, for twenty years. He was born in Wales and studied geology at the university there and in London. He uses his great experience as a scientific director as well as his passion for the history of his adopted country in this historical novel.

The stories featured in Baja California Adventures take place during a span of almost sixty years of travel in the rugged, parched yet hauntingly attractive peninsula. The author kept detailed notes on most of his trips, then fleshed out this skeleton in a narrative which places the reader in the role of participant in the adventure. Thus one feels the bite of the 4WD tires into the desert sand, newly hard-packed by the moisture of a quick-moving thunderstorm. The author describes the excitement of finding Indian petroglyphs, arrowheads or clay ollas in remote canyons. Because Mr. Tiscareo is also a pilot, many of the trips included here involve mention of the special immigration rules for private fly-in tourists. Finally, there are Baja Adventures in the pine-clad granite fortress that is the Sierra de San Pedro Mrtir in the northern part of the peninsula. Here, the author joined other veteran Bajeos in hoof-and-boot or horse-assisted explorations. In short, this book should be inspiration to those readers who want to visit Baja California, particularly the less tourist-trod destinations. Arm-chair travelers will derive vicarious pleasure without the effort of going there themselves.

Foothold in the Heavens, the second volume in the A History of Human Space Exploration series, focuses upon the 1970s, the decade in which humanity established real, longterm foothold in the heavens with the construction and operation of the first space stations. It marked a transitional phase between the heady, race-to-the-Moon days of the Sixties and efforts to make space travel more economical, more frequent and more 'routine.' Space exploration in the Seventies, although dominated by Soviet achievement, saw the first efforts of mankind to really 'live' and work in space, producing results of direct benefit to humans on Earth. The emphasis changed from the gung-ho, 'strap-it-on-and-go' pioneers of the Sixties to the more practical exploitation of space for science, medicine, and technology. This book focuses on each mission launched between April 1971 and April 1981: from the launch of the world's first space station to the end of operations of Salyut 6, and from the expanded, lengthy exploration of the Moon on Apollo 15 to the first flight of the Shuttle.