What a refreshing look at Hispanic folklore. Now we can relish the stories we grew up hearing as young latino children. Our parents' and grandparents' stories handed down throughout the generations, welcome us once again in listening to these audio tapes of "The Corn Woman." Didn't you ever wonder where your parents and grandparents stories got their roots from? Try listening to this series and perhaps you will find your answer. These stories add spice to our imaginations. They take us back to our youth, as if we were hearing them for the first time from our elders. Enjoy the splendor of hearing these folklore stories in either Spanish or English, with your purchase of this audio series.

Barbara Nadine and Tondelayo wanted nothing more out of life than a chance to continue advancing in their Navy careers. One white, one Cherokee and black , they had survived a poverty childhood together; they had survived the difficulties minorities and 'so-called white trash' folks endured in the service to become second class Petty Officers. Everything was copasetic until Barbara Nadine was found dead in a locked duty room on Treasure Island. Locked from the inside. Tondelayo was convinced that her best friend was murdered, but all she had to go on was mother-wit and grit. Along the way, she inadvertently stirred up something sinister, which involved chilling revelations about the forces determined to eliminate her. Scary. Solving the puzzle took her around the Bay Area to the hills of Marin County and to the underground corridors of Oak Knoll hospital, and the surprise ending couldn't have been imagined by anybody but the author.

Published in 1995, Freedom & Its Discontents contains nine essays written between 1969 and 1994. Most were originally published in Harper's, The Nation, and Psychology Today.

The Fiery Vehemence of Youth, (1969) is largely the result of Marin's year as director of Pacific High School in California (1967-68). Marin argues that the American educational system is "geared to another century" and is incapable of adapting to the demands created by the "inner events in adolescents" of the 1960s. Where the goal of education should be "intelligent activity [and] wisdom," traditional schools teach self restraint for the sake of order and produce "immobility, insecurity, [and] an inability to act without institutional blessing." For Marin, the alternative was to make of the world a school. Adolescents "respond more fully and more intelligently when they make direct contact with the community," where they can learn to deal with the "freedom of volition in all its complexity." And, indeed, Marin began his year at Pacific by eliminating the school's few rules (prohibition against drug use and mandatory school construction work) and later intervened when interference by parents or police threatened the freedom of students or staff to conduct school activities in the world at large.

The New Narcissism (1975) examines the "trend in therapy toward a deification of the isolated self." In it comedy and pathos share the page: the "ill-taught and ignorant catechism" of EST; a therapist's claim that "we are all entirely responsible for our destinies;..... the Jews must have wanted to be burned by the Germans." Marin suggests that therapeutic self-obsession is an attempt to legitimize our inclination to "smother the tug of conscience" and to defend against the demands of the world.

Spiritual Obedience (1979) is based on Marin's experience teaching for several weeks at the Buddhist school, Naropa Institute, in Boulder, Colorado. Founded by Chogyam Trungpa, a witty, hard drinking forty-year-old believed by his followers to be the incarnation of an earlier Tibetan master, Naropa attracts artists, intellectuals and academicians as both faculty members and adherents. The center point of the essay is the story of the poet, William Merwin, who came to Naropa to teach and met with violent treatment at the direction of Trungpa and to which none of his followers objected. It is the behavior of the followers and their "immense capacity for passivity and obedience" which Marin explores by relating reason and morality: "It is fashionable these days in intellectual or countercultural circles to decry the loss of mysticism, irrationality, and intuition, and to believe that their return would somehow restore the generosity and stability men have lost. But all this is nonsense. The great rationalist dream of the Enlightenment -- that reason might lead men toward justice and lives of conscience -- has never been proved unworthy or false; it has hardly been tried...........The history of America has in fact had little to do with reason, consisting instead of wave upon wave of zealotry and ideology, and religious excess, generations of superstition and foolish beliefs, and a yearning for salvation and the ceaseless abdication of the stoic virtues necessary to democratic life: independent thought; the acceptance of human weakness; humility in the face of complex truths; the refusal to abjure either choice or responsibility; and the willingness to choose conscience and uncertainty rather than submission and safety."

Two essays, Coming to Terms With Vietnam (1980) and Living in Moral Pain (1981) examine moral questions in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. The insightless Vietnam war films ( for example, Jane Fonda's Coming Home - "simpleminded and reductive in.....pursuit of virtue," Apocalypse Now - "morally stupid") do not acknowledge that actions in the real world can have devastating consequences for others and that the enemy are not symbols but people like ourselves. Marin sees such films as "imperial art.......designed to appeal to the citizens of a powerful but declining empire by allowing us the luxury of 'facing' reality while at the same time denying our role within it. Supposedly challenged, we are secretly soothed." He describes the torment of American Vietnam veterans trying to come to terms with their guilt and instead being pressed by well meaning therapists to participate in an unconscious cover-up by accepting the labels of "impacted grief", "acute combat reaction", or "delayed-stress syndrome" instead of acknowledging that it was the moral choices they had made which contribute substantially to their anguish of horror and guilt.

Easily the most challenging essay for this reader and, I suspect, the author as well, is the final seventy-page Freedom and Its Discontents (1994). In this piece Marin first confesses the unfulfilled promises of the secularist movement of which he is a self-proclaimed member. He was brought up believing that the "sources, ends and means of human meaning and moral value can be derived from and sustained by a purely human frame of reference," that a respect for reason in the interpretation of history, society and human nature is elemental and essential to the freedom which America's founders envisioned, and that "defining good and evil in terms of the will of God [should be viewed with] deep skepticism." He states that the tenets of secularism remain valid but that in America "this presumed force for tolerance, this belief supposedly grounded in reason, this tradition of skepticism, has now become something else altogether, has grown into its near opposite, and it now partakes of precisely the same arrogance, the same irrationality and passion for certainty, the same pretense to unquestioned virtue against which its powers were once arrayed." He goes on: "We bred out of secularism the deep seriousness that once informed it; the senses of tragedy, complexity, and ambiguity which once marked it as a legitimate response to the mindlessness of others have disappeared. And we've picked up along the way the bags and baggage of those mindless others: a passion for totalizing thought; a conviction that we know better than others what is good for them; an increasing reliance on coercion, a readiness to force upon people through law what reason cannot teach them; and a sense of superiority or virtue which makes us contemptuous of others and allows us to sacrifice their freedoms to our ends."

Marin suspects that once Americans achieved freedom we assumed that all the rest would fall into place by some natural and inevitable chain reaction. We would gradually begin to respect each other and ourselves; ethics and morality would flow from our inate, human inclinations; the civil institutions of our democracy would assure the dispensation of fairness and opportunity within a moral framework. But "freedom in itself guarantees nothing; it is merely the beginning of a task; it is itself a question: how shall we live ?" And Marin points out that the current American secular ethic is one in which "duty is conflated with desire, and in which morality is almost entirely identical to will, inclination and ideological preconception.......[that is,] no ethic at all." The closest we've come to establishing a moral framework for individual behavior, according to Marin, is psychology where popular therapies demonstrate our "fuddled attitudes toward responsibility, reciprocity, indebtedness, duty [and] guilt." It is not much to show for all the good intentions of American secularists - a psychology which "has become a scandal and a joke, a form of ritualized ignorance in which almost every human act is shed of genuine moral content." Marin is persuasive; secularists have promised us much but, despite their virtual control of American civil, educational

This book is a real treat. You gain not only very good recipes but also interesting insights into Greek culture.

Older towns and cities of the East Bay offer history and nature: Hidden Walks In The East Bay & Marin provides selected walks through lesser-known urban environments which contain many surprises, from waterfalls to stunning homes which blend with the scenery. Descriptions of each walk include terrain, sightseeing and difficulty levels, along with small maps.

This amazing book gives a firsthand account of the author's collaboration, friendship, and ultimate betrayal as a one-time close associate of the infamous Fidel Castro. This book reveals truths about the rise of communism and its implications that are unknown to many not familiar with the true story of lies, deceit, and political intrigue that underlie his revolution. If you want the truth about how a country ninety miles from American soil became enshrouded by the shadow of communism, you will not find a more intimate point of view. This historical work contains many truths which have been obscured by the passage of time and the puppetmasters of international policy. Cuba's importance in the affairs of the western hemisphere can not be understated. If you are one who seeks the truth, it is to be found in this book. This man gave his life for the cause of freedom.

Now that this major contribution to the history and culture of Andalusian Spain during the heyday of high medieval Muslim culture is available in a paper edition, this text should be considered for course work as there is quite simply no other resource like it in English that attempts to provide a fulsome account of Islam in Spain.

(Spanish review -- English version appears below) Por fin, este excelente tomo sobre la historia dramática e importante del Batallón de San Patricio, que luchó al lado mexicano durante la intervención yanqui 1846-48, está traducido a español. Y no solo traducido, pero traducido por un general de brigada mexicano, y un historiador sobresaliente, Clever Chávez Marin. Entonces, toda la investigación rigurosa de Hogan, y toda la poesía de la historia, está disponible al lector hispanoparlante.

De herencia irlandesa (uno de sus antepasados aparece en la placa que conmemora el batallón en San Ángel, DF), Hogan también consultó en la pelicula "Heroes o Traidores", proyecto cinematográfico mexicano-americano que explora la aventura y tragedia de los San Patricios.

El libro es una respuesta fuerte a los muchos estudios extranjeros que han defendido el "destino manifiesto" de la época, y, con su estilo muy vivaz, ha alcanzado un nivel impresionante de popularidad, en México y afuera.

Hogan nos presenta una vista de de triunfos personales y históricos durante un conflicto que aun lideres norteamericanos como Grant y Lincoln consideraba vergonzoso, nos da nuevos datos y recursos derivados de su investigaciones através de muchos años, y nos permite, ya con la colaboración de Chávez Marin, celebrar los triunfos de este episodio y sus personajes memorables.

(English version of review) Finally, this excellent volume on the dramatic and important story of the San Patricio Batallion, which fought on the Mexican side during the 1846-48 Mexican War, has been translated, by a Mexican brigadier general, Clever Chávez Marin; an outstanding historian in his own right. Thus, all the rigorous research, and all the story's poetry captured by Hogan is now available to readers of Spanish.

Of Irish descent (one of his forebears appears on the plaque in a Mexico City plaza which commemorates the batallion's valor), Hogan was also consultant on the film "One Man's Hero" -- a U.S./Mexican project which explores the San Patricios' adventures and ultimate tragedies.

The book is a compelling response to many studies which continue to defend the U.S."manifest destiny" of this era, and, with its lively style, has achieved equally impressive popularity in Mexico, the U.S. and Ireland.

Hogan gives us a view of personal and historic triumphs during a conflict which even such leaders as Grant and Lincoln considered as "shameful", he gives us new facts and resources borne of his years of research, and now, with the collaboration of Chávez Marin, he permits us to celebrate the triumphs of the memorable characters who figured in this historic episode.

My first look at this book, I was wondering if it would be any different or better than everything else I've seen in the past. I must say, I was largely impressed by this book once I was through. Although the writing was a tad elementary, the art and illustrations were nothing short of amazing. The story line was very good, and being I am Argentinian, I just had to smile when I noticed the dulce de leche in one of the pictures! All in all I liked this comic very much. This is definitely a wonderful book and I look forward to reading on the next ones.

This version of "Gandhi the Man," written for a younger audience, contains the essence and wisdom of its predecessor. I work as an educational therapist in a center that specializes in assisting students of all ages with their academic difficulties. Many of these students have mild to severe learning disabilities. One of my favorite students, a young black man of about twenty years of age with particularly severe problems in reading comprehension, was especially inspired by this book. His grandfather had been one of the bodyguards of Martin Luther King, Jr., and he knew that King had followed Gandhi's ideas. This young man also had many fears and he could well relate to the description of Gandhi as a child - awkward, shy, seemingly with no potential. After each page we read together, his homework assignment was to write a summary of the portion covered. This proved to be an excellent means for him to improve academically while receiving the needed inspiration to face the challenges in his life with courage. Easwaran's portrayal of Gandhi enables a person from any background to overcome his inner weaknesses and achieve his greatest potential.