Legacy Of The Roras

JESSE PULLMEN lived a quiet life with his adopted father, Councilor Elegan Pullmen, in the hidden oceanic city of Aquaterra. Along with his friend Helbit Massic, Jesse spent his days exploring the hidden city while dreaming of life in the world above. The people of Aquaterra had been banished beneath the sea by the fierce Restil race hundreds of years before, during an invasion that also destroyed the ancient protectors of their world, the Roras. Little did Jesse suspect that a chance meeting with a young woman named Jenn Verecy would start a chain of events that would reveal his own Rora heritage and drastically alter the fate of Aquaterra. For Jenn was the keeper of a mighty Prophecy that could free the people of Aquaterra from their ancient prison, and provide its heroes with the necessary steps to repel their enemies. Now Jesse must find a way to protect Jenn even as he begins training under the watchful eyes of a mysterious Rora named Therin. But even as Jesses strength grows, powerful beings are on the move, aware of the Prophecy and desperate to claim it for their own purposes. It will take all of Jesses newfound abilities to deliver this Prophecy to its intended recipient and finally begin the journey beyond the dome of Aquaterra to face the enemy above. Collected here is the complete tale of Jesse, Helbit, Jenn and their desperate quest through Aquaterra and beyond. A mission to free their people from the tyrannical grip of the Restils, and restore their world to its rightful inhabitants.

A major contribution to the field of comparative state formation and the scholarship on long-term political development of Latin America "Ambitious and rich. . . . A sweeping and general theory of state formation and detailed historical reconstruction of essential events in Latin American political development. It combines structural elements with a novel emphasis on the political incentives and bargaining that shaped the map we have today."--Hillel David Soifer, Governance Latin American governments systematically fail to provide the key public goods for their societies to prosper. Sebastián Mazzuca argues that the secret of Latin America's failure is that its states were "born weak," in contrast to states in western Europe, North America, and Japan. State formation in post-Independence Latin America occurred in a period when capitalism, rather than war, was the key driver forging countries. In pursuing the short-term benefits of international trade, Latin American leaders created states with chronic weaknesses, notably patrimonial administrations and dysfunctional regional combinations. Mazzuca analyzes pathways leading to variations in country size and level of pacification: "port-led" state formation in Argentina and Brazil; "party-led" in Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay; and "lord-led" in Central America, Venezuela, and Peru.

Has thinking, working and teaching in terms of national literatures become obsolete in today’s globalized world of hyphenated languages, literatures and cultures? Since the rise of modern European national philologies coincided with the emergence of modern European nation-states, does the dissolution of the latter in the European supranational unity imply the suspension of the former? Or we must, on the contrary, consider the fact that today’s Europe is not only postnational but, in its re-nationalized East-Central-European part, post-multinational as well, i.e., emerging out of the breakdown of the postimperial state formations such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia?

The thirty-six texts analysed in these two volumes deal mainly with three aspects of Tuscarora culture: cosmological and traditional religious beliefs, medical practices and mythology.

How did it happen that whole regions of Latin America—Amazonia, Patagonia, the Caribbean—are named for monstrous races of women warriors, big-footed giants and cannibals? Through history, monsters inhabit human imaginings of discovery and creation, and also degeneration, chaos, and death. Latin America’s most dynamic monsters can be traced to archetypes that are found in virtually all of the world's sacred traditions, but only in Latin America did Amazons, cannibals, zombies, and other monsters become enduring symbols of regional history, character, and identity. From Amazons to Zombies presents a comprehensive account of the qualities of monstrosity, the ways in which monsters function within and among cultures, and theories and genres of the monstrous. It describes the genesis and evolution of monsters in the construction and representation of Latin America from the Ancient world and early modern Iberia to the present.

A biography of America's greatest female sharpshooter delves beneath her popular image to reveal a conservative but competitive woman who wanted to succeed.

Looking at the Latin American liberal project during the century of postindependence, this collection of original essays draws attention to an underappreciated dilemma confronting liberals: idealistic visions and fiscal restraints. Liberals, Politics, and Power focuses on the inventiveness of nineteenth-century Latin Americans who applied liberal ideology to the founding and maintenance of new states. The impact of liberalism in Latin America, the contributors show, is best understood against the larger backdrop of struggles that pitted regional demands against the pressures of foreign finance, a powerful church against a decentralized state, and aristocratic desire to retain privilege against rising demands for social mobility. Moving beyond the traditional historiographical division between Eurocentric and dependency theories, the essays attempt to account for a uniquely Latin American liberal ideology and politics by exploring the political dynamics of such countries as Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru. Contributors discuss liberal efforts to build a viable legal order through elections and to implement a means of public finance that could fund the states' operations. Essays that span the entire century address issues such as the emergence of caudillos, the role of artisans, and popular participation in elections in light of fiscal, and other, impediments to progress. In their introduction, Vincent C. Peloso and Barbara A. Tenenbaum provide a hemispheric overview of liberalism that illustrates its similarities across Latin America. By exploring the liberal constitutional and economic order lying beneath apparently dictatorial states, this pathbreaking volume underlines the importance of fiscal policy in the fashioning of state power. Liberals, Politics, and Power serves not only as a guide to the liberal principles and practices that governed state formation in nineteenth-century Latin America but also as a means to evaluate the complex relationship between ideas and practical politics.

DIVEssays in collection argue that Latin American legal institutions were both mechanisms of social control and unique arenas for ordinary people to contest government policies and resist exploitation./div