Kirjahaku

A Culture of Its Own: Taking Latin America Seriously presents Mark Falcoff's essays on the region. Many of them are contentious; none of them are dull. He ranges from bilingualism to the cult of Garcia Lorca, from U.S.-Cuban relations to Chile's curious love affair with Germany. On more than one occasion, Falcoff takes aim at American journalism and scholarship, both of which, he argues, have all too often produced a fantasy version of Latin America which reflects our own national narcissism rather than genuine curiosity about the other. Latin America, Falcoff argues, is not merely a geographical extension of the United States, or a kind of downmarket version of the American Southwest. It is a culture all its own, with its own historical memory, sensibility, and worldview. Its achievements -and its miseries-are also its own, not the end-product of policies made by the Pentagon, Wall Street, or the CIA.Falcoff writes about the region with originality, iconoclastic wit, and distinctive literary flair. His volume will interest Latin American specialists, diplomats, and journalists as well as those general readers who think they are not interested in Latin America-or who only suspect they might be, but don't know quite where to start.

The year is 1971 and America's long romance with higher education is coming to an end, provoked by worsening economic conditions and growing campus unrest. Unfortunately for Geoffrey Yawlings, 27 years of age and a recent Ph.D. in history from Harvard, the only job he can find is a shaky two year contract at a mediocre state university in the Pacific Northwest--geographically isolated, deeply provincial--in a state where it rains nine months a year but which insists upon calling itself "the Utopia where all Americans dream of living". Geoffrey's new colleagues resemble nothing so much as recently demobilized officers of a defeated army and his students are stoned on pot most of the time. Worse still, the only way the university can be rescued financially is if the state legislature decides to approve a lottery. Then and only then will Geoffrey have a chance to waste his life in the academic backlands. But even this may not happen, particularly if a certain radical sociology professor manages to "sharpen the contradictions"... A Season in Utopia is a hilarious send-up of academic life in America--its characteristic human types, its rituals, frustrations, self-delusions, and harsh realities. Anyone who thinks his or her life would have been happier as a college professor needs to read this witty, entertaining book.

A Culture of Its Own: Taking Latin America Seriously presents Mark Falcoff's essays on the region. Many of them are contentious; none of them are dull. He ranges from bilingualism to the cult of Garcia Lorca, from U.S.-Cuban relations to Chile's curious love affair with Germany. On more than one occasion, Falcoff takes aim at American journalism and scholarship, both of which, he argues, have all too often produced a fantasy version of Latin America which reflects our own national narcissism rather than genuine curiosity about the other. Latin America, Falcoff argues, is not merely a geographical extension of the United States, or a kind of downmarket version of the American Southwest. It is a culture all its own, with its own historical memory, sensibility, and worldview. Its achievements -and its miseries-are also its own, not the end-product of policies made by the Pentagon, Wall Street, or the CIA.Falcoff writes about the region with originality, iconoclastic wit, and distinctive literary flair. His volume will interest Latin American specialists, diplomats, and journalists as well as those general readers who think they are not interested in Latin America-or who only suspect they might be, but don't know quite where to start.