Mexico Across Millennia

This reference book is a compilation and description, in English, of the most prominent facets of our neighbor's history and was written to provide readers with a clear and factual understanding of its past. The work covers Mexico from its earliest identified indigenous civilizations through the modern era. It includes entries on a variety of important political leaders, intellectuals, writers, artists, soldiers, and the like who shaped Mexico while also bringing notable, if perhaps lesser-known, figures to the fore. It also includes detailed information on many native cultures and events, movements, organizations, parties, and ideas central to Mexican history. Each of the book's 606 entries is roughly half-a-page in length, but some major topics - Maya, the Catholic Church, Sor Juana, Hidalgo, Santa Anna, constitutions, Villa, the Revolution, Kahlo, and USMCA, for example - are longer. No entry is intended to be encyclopedic in scope, but all were written to provide fundamental facts and relevance to time and place in Mexican history. It is a lamentable circumstance that many in the United States, and elsewhere, know little about Mexico and they consequently often consider the nation with an underlying sense of mistrust if not outright disdain. The truth is that, with our long, shared border, interrelated economies, and blending populations and cultures, few nations in the world are of more importance to the United States than Mexico. In fact, in virtually every sphere vital to us - national security, health, energy, immigration, trade, crime, the environment, to name but a few - Mexico touches our daily lives and therefore should be, must be, treated as a primary partner and ally rather than adversary or foe. By providing details of the history of Mexico in an engaging and factual format, this book seeks to make the country more accessible, stimulate greater interest in its people and past, and help build greater understanding of one of the most remarkable places on earth.

There is very little about Swat, from the said perspectives, that cannot be learned from reading this book. Beginning with details of its nomenclature and geography, the book continues with covering and thoroughly examining and discussing the prehistory and protohistoric periods of Swat, different aspects of Alexander of Macedonia's invasion, the period from the Mauryas to the Hindu Shahis, religious perspective of Swat, Muslims' occupation and pre-Yusufzi's period,the Yusufzi's occupation, their social system and mode of ruling, the Mughals and Swat, Khushal Khan Khattak and Swat, the period from 1707 till 1915 CE, and the Kuhistan. The present volume details the above topics and themes in the regional, international, geopolitical and strategic contexts of theperiods concerned.

"Textbook for undergrad general education and dance courses on the topic of dance around the world. It serves as a gateway into studying world cultures through dance"--

Charting the political, social, and environmental history of efforts to conserve crop diversity. Many people worry that we're losing genetic diversity in the foods we eat. Over the past century, crop varieties standardized for industrial agriculture have increasingly dominated farm fields. Concerned about what this transition means for the future of food, scientists, farmers, and eaters have sought to protect fruits, grains, and vegetables they consider endangered. They have organized high-tech genebanks and heritage seed swaps. They have combed fields for ancient landraces and sought farmers growing Indigenous varieties. Behind this widespread concern for the loss of plant diversity lies another extinction narrative that concerns the survival of farmers themselves, a story that is often obscured by urgent calls to collect and preserve. Endangered Maize draws on the rich history of corn in Mexico and the United States to uncover this hidden narrative and show how it shaped the conservation strategies adopted by scientists, states, and citizens. In Endangered Maize, historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more than a hundred years of agriculture and conservation practices to understand the tasks that farmers and researchers have considered essential to maintaining crop diversity. Through the contours of efforts to preserve diversity in one of the world's most important crops, Curry reveals how those who sought to protect native, traditional, and heritage crops forged their methods around the expectation that social, political, and economic transformations would eliminate diverse communities and cultures. In this fascinating study of how cultural narratives shape science, Curry argues for new understandings of endangerment and alternative strategies to protect and preserve crop diversity.

Common understandings drawn from biblical references, literature, and art portray deserts as barren places that are far from God and spiritual sustenance. In our own time, attention focuses on the rigors of climate change in arid lands and the perils of the desert in the northern Mexican borderlands for migrants seeking shelter and a new life. Bountiful Deserts foregrounds the knowledge of Indigenous peoples in the arid lands of northwestern Mexico, for whom the desert was anything but barren or empty. Instead, they nurtured and harvested the desert as a bountiful and sacred space. Drawing together historical texts and oral testimonies, archaeology, and natural history, author Cynthia Radding develops the relationships between people and plants and the ways that Indigenous people sustained their worlds before European contact through the changes set in motion by Spanish encounters, highlighting the long process of colonial conflicts and adaptations over more than two centuries. This work reveals the spiritual power of deserts by weaving together the cultural practices of historical peoples and contemporary living communities, centered especially on the Yaqui/Yoeme and Mayo/Yoreme. Radding uses the tools of history, anthropology, geography, and ecology to paint an expansive picture of Indigenous worlds before and during colonial encounters. She re-creates the Indigenous worlds in both their spiritual and material realms, bringing together the analytical dimension of scientific research and the wisdom of oral traditions in its exploration of different kinds of knowledge about the natural world. Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University

Angus Maddison provides a comprehensive view of the growth and levels of world population since the year 1000 when rich countries of today were poorer than Asia and Africa. The gap between the world leader, the US and the poorest region, Africa, is ...