Mission accomplished. Readers will come away not only hungry, but with a deeper understanding of the Mexican people and...
An appealing cultural exploration of Mexican food in the United States.
Part history, part social commentary, Arellano’s (Orange County: A Personal History, 2008, etc.) comprehensive narrative will certainly whet the appetite of readers, as he chronicles how Mexican food products moved across the border and into American homes, restaurants and grocery stores. The author discusses tamales sold on the street corners of Chicago, canned tortillas and the first frozen-margarita machine, now ensconced in the Smithsonian. He examines the advent of the Mexican restaurant and the rise of Taco Bell, Chi-Chi’s and other chains, chili con carne cook-offs and the difference between Tex-Mex and true Mexican food. Arellano explains the history behind bottled salsa and the idea that the product is the “top-selling condiment in this country, even more than ketchup. It’s partly true: salsa does bring in more revenue for companies than ketchup…but [in 2007] ketchup moved more units.” Readers travel along with the author as he explores the rise of Mexican cookbooks, most written by non-Mexicans, the author’s five favorite Mexican meals in the United States and the search for “authentic” Mexican food. Because Mexican food is so ubiquitous—from restaurant menus to grocery-store shelves—Arellano writes, “the purpose of this book is not just to cover a cuisine whose history barely registers into the official American story, but to make ustedes hungry. I want not only to make you desire Mexican food, but also to understand it, to appreciate it further.”
Mission accomplished. Readers will come away not only hungry, but with a deeper understanding of the Mexican people and their cuisine.Pub Date: April 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4391-4861-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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