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The Grim Sleeper: The Lost Women of South Central
by Christine PelisekThe inside story of one of the notorious and elusive serial killer who stalked the vulnerable, the young, and the ignored in 1980s Los Angeles—only to return in 2002.The Grim Sleeper was one of the most brutal serial killers in California history, preying on the women of South Central for decades. No one knows this story better than Christine Pelisek, the reporter who followed it for more than ten years. Based on extensive interviews, reportage, and information never released to the public, The Grim Sleeper captures the long, bumpy road to justice in one of the most startling true crime stories of our generation from his violent first crime while serving in the US Army to his inevitable death in prison."This upsetting account of a Los Angeles serial killer, written with passion by Christine Pelisek, an investigative crime reporter who spent 10 years working the case, blurts out a hard truth that no one wants to acknowledge . . . [She] tries to restore dignity to some of the victims by drawing sympathetic and carefully detailed life histories for each and every one of them." ―Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
The Grimace of Macho Ratón: Artisans, Identity, and Nation in Late-Twentieth-Century Western Nicaragua
by Les FieldIn this creative ethnography Les W. Field challenges a post-Sandinista national conception of identity, one that threatens to constrict the future of subaltern Nicaraguans. Drawing on the works and words of artisans and artisanas, Indians, and mestizos, Field critiques the national ideology of ethnic homogeneity and analyzes the new forms of social movement that have distinguished late-twentieth-century Nicaragua. As a framework for these analytic discussions, Field uses the colonial-era play El Güegüence o Macho Ratón and the literature relating to it. Elite appropriations of El Güegüence construe it as an allegory of mestizo national identity in which mestizaje is defined as the production of a national majority of ethnically bounded non-Indians in active collaboration with the state. By contrast, Field interprets the play as a parable of cultural history and not a declaration of cultural identity, a scatological reflection on power and the state, and an evocation of collective loss and humor broadly associated with the national experience of disempowered social groups. By engaging with those most intimately involved in the performance of the play--and by including essays by some of these artisans--Field shows how El Güegüence tells a story about the passing of time, the absurdity of authority, and the contradictions of coping with inheritances of the past. Refusing essentialist notions of what it means to be Indian or artisan, Field explains the reemergence of politicized indigenous identity in western Nicaragua and relates this to the longer history of artisan political organization. Parting ways with many scholars who associate the notion of mestizaje with identity loss and hegemony, Field emphasizes its creative,productive, and insightful meanings. With an emphasis on the particular struggles of women artisans, he explores the reasons why forms of collective identity have posed various kinds of predicaments for this marginalized class of western Nicaraguans. This book will appeal to readers beyond the field of Latin American anthropology, including students and scholars of literature, intellectual history, women's studies, and the politics of ethnicity.
The Grimkes: The Legacy Of Slavery In An American Family
by Kerri K. GreenidgePublishers Weekly • 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2022 New York Times • "15 Works of Nonfiction to Read This Fall", Best Books of November 2022 Boston Globe • "20 New Books We're Most Excited to Read This Fall" A stunning counternarrative of the legendary abolitionist Grimke sisters that finally reclaims the forgotten Black members of their family. Sarah and Angelina Grimke—the Grimke sisters—are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their privileged lives on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand activists in the North. Their antislavery pamphlets, among the most influential of the antebellum era, are still read today. Yet retellings of their epic story have long obscured their Black relatives. In The Grimkes, award-winning historian Kerri Greenidge presents a parallel narrative, indeed a long-overdue corrective, shifting the focus from the white abolitionist sisters to the Black Grimkes and deepening our understanding of the long struggle for racial and gender equality. That the Grimke sisters had Black relatives in the first place was a consequence of slavery’s most horrific reality. Sarah and Angelina’s older brother, Henry, was notoriously violent and sadistic, and one of the women he owned, Nancy Weston, bore him three sons: Archibald, Francis, and John. While Greenidge follows the brothers’ trials and exploits in the North, where Archibald and Francis became prominent members of the post–Civil War Black elite, her narrative centers on the Black women of the family, from Weston to Francis’s wife, the brilliant intellectual and reformer Charlotte Forten, to Archibald’s daughter, Angelina Weld Grimke, who channeled the family’s past into pathbreaking modernist literature during the Harlem Renaissance. In a grand saga that spans the eighteenth century to the twentieth and stretches from Charleston to Philadelphia, Boston, and beyond, Greenidge reclaims the Black Grimkes as complex, often conflicted individuals shadowed by their origins. Most strikingly, she indicts the white Grimke sisters for their racial paternalism. They could envision the end of slavery, but they could not imagine Black equality: when their Black nephews did not adhere to the image of the kneeling and eternally grateful slave, they were cruel and relentlessly judgmental—an emblem of the limits of progressive white racial politics. A landmark biography of the most important multiracial American family of the nineteenth century, The Grimkes suggests that just as the Hemingses and Jeffersons personified the racial myths of the founding generation, the Grimkes embodied the legacy—both traumatic and generative—of those myths, which reverberate to this day.
The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina
by Gerda LernerA landmark work of women's history originally published in 1967, Gerda Lerner's best-selling biography of Sarah and Angelina Grimke explores the lives and ideas of the only southern women to become antislavery agents in the North and pioneers for women's rights. This revised and expanded edition includes two new primary documents and an additional essay by Lerner. In a revised introduction Lerner reinterprets her own work nearly forty years later and gives new recognition to the major significance of Sarah Grimke's feminist writings.
The Grind: Black Women and Survival in the Inner City
by Alexis S. McCurnFew scholars have explored the collective experiences of women living in the inner city and the innovative strategies they develop to navigate daily life in this setting. The Grind illustrates the lived experiences of poor African American women and the creative strategies they develop to manage these events and survive in a community commonly exposed to violence. Alexis S. McCurn draws on nearly two years of naturalistic field research among adolescents and adults in Oakland, California to provide an ethnographic account of how black women accomplish the routine tasks necessary for basic survival in poor inner-city neighborhoods and how the intersections of race, gender, and class shape how black women interact with others in public. This book makes the case that the daily consequences of racialized poverty in the lives of African Americans cannot be fully understood without accounting for the personal and collective experiences of poor black women.
The Gringo Trail: A Darkly Comic Road Trip through South America
by Mark MannMark Mann and his girlfriend Melissa set off to explore the ancient monuments, mountains and rainforests of South America. But for their friend Mark, South America meant only one thing: drugs. Sad, funny and shocking, The Gringo Trail is a darkly comic road-trip and a revealing journey through South America’s turbulent history.
The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict: Feminist Interventions in International Law (Stanford Studies in Human Rights)
by Karen EngleContemporary feminist advocacy in human rights, international criminal law, and peace and security is gripped by the issue of sexual violence in conflict. But it hasn't always been this way. Analyzing feminist international legal and political work over the past three decades, Karen Engle argues that it was not inevitable that sexual violence in conflict would become such a prominent issue. Engle reveals that as feminists from around the world began to pay an enormous amount of attention to sexual violence in conflict, they often did so at the cost of attention to other issues, including the anti-militarism of the women's peace movement; critiques of economic maldistribution, imperialism, and cultural essentialism by feminists from the global South; and the sex-positive positions of many feminists involved in debates about sex work and pornography. The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict offers a detailed examination of how these feminist commitments were not merely deprioritized, but undermined, by efforts to address the issue of sexual violence in conflict. Engle's analysis reinvigorates vital debates about feminist goals and priorities, and spurs readers to question much of today's common sense about the causes, effects, and proper responses to sexual violence in conflict.
The Gritty Berkshires: A People's History From The Hoosac Tunnel To Mass Moca
by Maynard SeiderAs The Gritty Berkshires makes clear, Massachusetts' westernmost county is not just art museums, music festivals and beautiful scenery. For generations of working class families who have lived in the northern part of this county, their reality looks more like Rust Belt America. Maynard Seider, an activist sociologist who has taught and researched in the area for more than three decades, places the history of the North Berkshire region in the context of U.S. and global history. Through the use of oral histories, union archives, newspaper accounts and participant observation, the author focuses on the 1,000 men who built the nation's longest railroad tunnel, the thousands of men and women who worked in its textile mills and electronics factories and who struck, built worker co-ops, and community coalitions to improve their daily lives. In this history, we learn how the Berkshires offer insight into so many crucial aspects of the American experience. Moving from the early 1800s to the present, Seider weaves a narrative that details the area's vibrant immigrant history, slavery's role in its textile industry, the battle for national unions and the ideological struggles with corporate elites over who best speaks for the community. Enriched by dozens of photographs, these stories focus on the voices of ordinary people as they often do extraordinary things. Seider concludes his book by considering the question of "What's next?" through a case study of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). These brick buildings which housed generations of blue and white collar workers until 1986 now attract tourists to the country's largest contemporary art collection. Yet the unanswered question remains, can a tourist-service economy provide a meaningful and economically sustainable life for its residents? The Gritty Berkshires' last section deals with this question both nationally and locally, exploring diverse responses amidst the nation's growing inequality, militarism and cutbacks in social services.
The Groom Will Keep His Name: And Other Vows I've Made About Race, Resistance, and Romance
by Matt OrtileA riotous collection of "witty and captivating" (Bitch Magazine) essays by a gay Filipino immigrant in America learning that everything is about sex--and sex is about powerWhen Matt Ortile moved from Manila to Las Vegas, the locals couldn't pronounce his name. Harassed as a kid for his brown skin, accent, and femininity, he believed he could belong in America by marrying a white man and shedding his Filipino identity. This was the first myth he told himself. The Groom Will Keep His Name explores the various tales Ortile spun about what it means to be a Vassar Girl, an American Boy, and a Filipino immigrant in New York looking to build a home. As we meet and mate, we tell stories about ourselves, revealing not just who we are, but who we want to be. Ortile recounts the relationships and whateverships that pushed him to confront his notions of sex, power, and the model minority myth. Whether swiping on Grindr, analyzing DMs, or cruising steam rooms, Ortile brings us on his journey toward radical self-love with intelligence, wit, and his heart on his sleeve.
The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy
by Michael Jackson Veena Das Arthur Kleinman Bhrigupati SinghThe guiding inspiration of this book is the attraction and distance that mark the relation between anthropology and philosophy. This theme is explored through encounters between individual anthropologists and particular regions of philosophy. Several of the most basic concepts of the discipline--including notions of ethics, politics, temporality, self and other, and the nature of human life--are products of a dialogue, both implicit and explicit, between anthropology and philosophy. These philosophical undercurrents in anthropology also speak to the question of what it is to experience our being in a world marked by radical difference and otherness. In The Ground Between, twelve leading anthropologists offer intimate reflections on the influence of particular philosophers on their way of seeing the world, and on what ethnography has taught them about philosophy. Ethnographies of the mundane and the everyday raise fundamental issues that the contributors grapple with in both their lives and their thinking. With directness and honesty, they relate particular philosophers to matters such as how to respond to the suffering of the other, how concepts arise in the give and take of everyday life, and how to be attuned to the world through the senses. Their essays challenge the idea that philosophy is solely the province of professional philosophers, and suggest that certain modalities of being in the world might be construed as ways of doing philosophy.Contributors. João Biehl, Steven C. Caton, Vincent Crapanzano, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, Michael M. J. Fischer, Ghassan Hage, Clara Han, Michael Jackson, Arthur Kleinman, Michael Puett, Bhrigupati Singh
The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice
by Scott EllsworthOne of Oprah Daily's 20 of the Best Books to Pick Up This May | One of The Oklahoman's 15 books to help you learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre as the 100-year anniversary approachesAnd then they were gone. More than one-thousand homes and businesses. Restaurants and movie theaters, churches and doctors&’ offices, a hospital, a public library, a post office. Looted, burned, and bombed from the air. Over the course of less than twenty-four hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa&’s infamous &“Black Wall Street&” was wiped off the map—and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than fifty years. But there were some secrets that would not die. A riveting and essential new book, The Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa Race Massacre. It also unearths the lost history of how the massacre was covered up, and of the courageous individuals who fought to keep the story alive. Most importantly, it recounts the ongoing archaeological saga and the search for the unmarked graves of the victims of the massacre, and of the fight to win restitution for the survivors and their families. Both a forgotten chronicle from the nation&’s past, and a story ripped from today&’s headlines, The Ground Breaking is a page-turning reflection on how we, as Americans, must wrestle with the parts of our history that have been buried for far too long.
The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity #6)
by Walter Earl Fluker&“An exuberant, thought-provoking assessment of the dilemmas facing black churches&” examining their historic role in today&’s cultural landscape (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In The Ground Has Shifted, Walter Earl Fluker discusses the historical and current role of the Black church and argues that the older race-based language and metaphors of religious discourse have outlived their utility. He offers instead a larger, global vision for the Black church that focuses on young Black men and other disenfranchised groups who have been left behind in a world of globalized capital. Lyrically written with an emphasis on the dynamic and fluid movement of life itself, Fluker argues that the church must find new ways to use race as an emancipatory instrument if it is to remain central in Black life. He points the way for a new generation of church leaders, scholars and activists to reclaim the Black church&’s historical identity and to turn to the task of infusing character, civility, and a sense of community among its congregants.Honorable Mention, Theology and Religious Studies PROSE Award
The Grounds of Gaming (Digital Game Studies)
by Nicholas TaylorHow do we make space for video games in the places where we live, work, and play—and who is allowed to feel welcome there? Despite attempts to expand games beyond their conventional audience of young men, the physical contexts of gameplay and production remain off-limits and unsafe for so many.The Grounds of Gaming explores the physical places where games are played and how they contribute to the persistence of gaming's problematic politics. Drawing on fieldwork in an array of sites, author Nicholas Taylor explores the real-world settings where games are played, watched, discussed and designed. Sometimes these places are sticky, dark, and stinky; other times they are pristine and well appointed. Situating its chapters in such scenes as domestic gaming setups, campus computer labs, LAN parties, esports arenas, and convention centers, Taylor maps the infrastructural connections between games, place, masculinity, and whiteness.By inviting us to reconsider gaming's cultural politics from the ground up, The Grounds of Gaming offers new theoretical insights and practical resources regarding how to make game cultures and industries more inclusive.
The Group Therapist's Notebook: Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy
by Dawn ViersFollowing in the footsteps of the successful first edition, The Group Therapist’s Notebook, Second Edition offers an all new collection of innovative ideas and proven interventions that will enhance any group therapy practice. Seasoned and up-and-coming experts provide field-tested activities, easy to reproduce handouts, and practical homework assignments for a variety of problems and population types. Each chapter is solidly grounded with a theoretical foundation and includes materials to gather for implementing the intervention, detailed instructions for use, suggestions for follow-up in successive meetings, contraindications for use, and resources for the client and therapist. With an added emphasis on instruction, real-world examples, and extension activities, this new resource will be a valuable asset for both beginning and established mental health practitioners, including counselor educators, social workers, marriage and family therapists, guidance counselors, prevention educators, peer support specialists, and other group facilitators.
The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income: Implications for Federal Programs and Policy Responses
by Committee on the Long-Run Macroeconomic Effects of the Aging U.S. Population<P> According to many studies, life expectancy has been rising fastest for people with higher education or income, so the gap in longevity by socioeconomic status has been increasing. This trend is important in itself, but it also means that higher-income people will increasingly collect government benefits such as Social Security over more years than will lower-income people. It also means that some proposed policy changes to make programs fiscally sustainable, such as raising the normal retirement age for Social Security or raising the eligibility age for Medicare, might disproportionately affect those with lower incomes. <P><P> These topics are discussed in this report. The study first reviews the literature on differences in longevity by education and by income and on trends in these differences; the committee then constructs some new estimates of our own. Next the report discusses the conceptual background for these issues and why they are important. We go on to evaluate the way that the widening income differences in mortality affect the value of net lifetime benefits for different income groups from Social Security retirement and spousal benefits, Disability Insurance, Survivors Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income. Finally, we consider how the differential changes in mortality would affect analyses of some possible reforms to government programs for the elderly in the face of population aging. We consider the consequences of policies such as raising the earliest eligibility age and the normal retirement age under Social Security, raising the age of eligibility for Medicare, basing the cost-of-living adjustment on a different kind of consumer price index, and changing the formula for how benefits are calculated for higher-income beneficiaries.
The Growing Trend of Living Small: A Critical Approach to Shrinking Domesticities (Home)
by Ella Harris Mel Nowicki Tim WhiteThis book examines the growing trend for housing models that shrink private living space and seeks to understand the implications of these shrinking domestic worlds. Small spaces have become big business. Reducing the size of our homes, and the amount of stuff within them, is increasingly sold as a catch-all solution to the stresses of modern life and the need to reduce our carbon footprint. Shrinking living space is being repackaged in a neoliberal capitalist context as a lifestyle choice rather than the consequence of diminishing choice in the face of what has become a long-term housing ‘crisis’. What does this mean for how we live in the long term, and is there a dark side to the promise of a simpler, more sustainable home life? Shrinking Domesticities brings together research from across the social sciences, planning and architecture to explore these issues. From co-living developments to the Tiny House Movement, self-storage units to practices of ‘de-stuffification’, and drawing on examples from across Europe, North America and Australasia, the authors of this volume seek to understand both what micro-living is bringing to our societies, and what it may be eroding
The Growth Of The Manufacturing Industry In Tanzania: An Economic History
by M. S. Silver M S SilverTracing the evolution of the Tanzanian manufacturing industry since the beginning of colonial rule, this book focuses on the period since independence and especially on the effects of socialist policies resulting from the 1967 Arusha Declaration. Dr. Silver develops volume indices of production for Tanzanian industry as a whole and for individual sectors. He also examines in detail changes in labor productivity, earnings, unit labor costs, investments, and the prices of manufactured goods, paying special attention to the role of government-controlled parastatals, the regional distribution of manufacturing industries, and income inequality. The rapid growth in production and employment and the changing structure of the manufacturing industry, he concludes, is due to high rates of investment in a small number of relatively large establishments, primarily in the parastatal sector.
The Growth and Distribution of Population (Routledge Library Editions: Demography #10)
by S. Vere PearsonOriginally published in 1935, this book examines the causes of global rural depopulation, slum housing conditions and city over-crowding. The falling birth-rate in the West, town planning, ribbon development, emigration and traffic problems are also discussed with particular focus on how they affect the growth and distribution of populations. Social, psychological and economic factors are all considered, as well as those dependent on physical geography.
The Growth of Incarceration in the United States
by Committee on Causes Consequences of High Rates of IncarcerationAfter decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States has increased fivefold during the last four decades. The U. S. penal population of 2. 2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons. The U. S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U. S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation's population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U. S. society. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines policy changes that created an increasingly punitive political climate and offers specific policy advice in sentencing policy, prison policy, and social policy. The report also identifies important research questions that must be answered to provide a firmer basis for policy. This report is a call for change in the way society views criminals, punishment, and prison. This landmark study assesses the evidence and its implications for public policy to inform an extensive and thoughtful public debate about and reconsideration of policies.
The Growth of Market Relations in Post-Reform Rural China: A Micro-Analysis of Peasants, Migrants and Peasant Entrepeneurs (Routledge Studies on the Chinese Economy)
by Hiroshi SatoThis book, based on in-depth field research at the local level, assesses the different factors that are contributing to the transition to a market economy and the growth of networks in rural China. It analyses the different socio-economic actors - peasant households, out-migrants, family businesses and peasant entrepreneurs, uses the key concept of markets as a nexus of social networks, and identifies three different kinds of 'social capital' - human capital, political capital/status, and network capital.This book demonstrates the importance of socio-political networks and highlights significant regional differences.
The Growth of Minds and Culture: A Unified Interpretation of the Structure of Human Experience
by Willem H. VanderburgThe impact of science and technology on culture raises a number of questions about the ways in which people relate to each other and to their environment. Such questions cannot be answered by traditional approaches. Thus another level of analysis is needed to complement the traditional approaches and to address future challenges. The first step in creating this new analysis was taken by Willem H. Vanderburg in 1985 with his pioneering work The Growth of Minds and Cultures. In this book, the first of a multi-volume series that includes Our Battle for the Human Spirit (2016), Vanderburg shows how the culture of a society underlies its science, technology, economy, social structure, political institutions, morality, religion, and art. As such, he seeks to build bridges not only between the ‘two cultures’ but between all the sciences in order to gain a deeper understanding of our age. This expanded second edition makes the author’s ground-breaking analysis available to a generation of digital natives.
The Growth of Working Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England (Routledge Revivals)
by Neville KirkThe post-Chartist period saw an easing of class tensions and the growth of a reformist working class. Using evidence based upon the cotton districts of north-west England, the author shows that enhanced socio-political stability owed much to economic restabilisation in his book The Growth of Working Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England (originally published in 1985).This book examines new and neglected areas of investigation, including the interplay between class and ethnicity and the institutional and sociological roots of reformism, and brings fresh evidence to bear upon more familiar areas of debate, such as trends in living standards.A materialist explanation of reformism and stability is propounded. Central importance is attached to the notion of an increasingly fragmented working class operating in a secure economic system which offered enhanced scope for class manoeuvre and labour’s advancement. The working class did not become incorporated, collaborationist, or deferential. The frequency of class struggle and continued working class independence could not, however, conceal the fact that the broad features of the system had been accepted. Piecemeal advancement became the order of the day.
The Growth of the Fruit and Vegetable Export Industry in Peru (SpringerBriefs in Economics)
by Tatsuya ShimizuThis is the first book that analyzes the growth of the Peruvian fresh fruit and vegetable (FFV) export industry from the view point of the industrial development. Instead of pointing out comparative advantages in production factors such as favorable climate and cheap labor, this book focuses on the strategies of agribusiness companies, industrial organizations, and the public sector in the FFV export industry. The analysis is based on the theoretical frameworks of coordination, integration, and upgrades in value chains, business strategies to overcome seasonality and mitigate risks in agriculture, and cluster development based on joint actions among players in the industry. Based on the field studies with major FFV production and export companies and industrial organizations, the case studies describe specific innovations in management and organizations taken by key actors in the industry. This book can help policymakers in developing countries seek industrial development options based on agricultural exports.
The Growth of the Medieval City: From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (A History of Urban Society in Europe)
by David M NicholasThe first part of David Nicholas's massive two-volume study of the medieval city, this book is a major achievement in its own right. (It is also fully self-sufficient, though many readers will want to use it with its equally impressive sequel which is being published simultaneously.) In it, Professor Nicholas traces the slow regeneration of urban life in the early medieval period, showing where and how an urban tradition had survived from late antiquity, and when and why new urban communities began to form where there was no such continuity. He charts the different types and functions of the medieval city, its interdependence with the surrounding countryside, and its often fraught relations with secular authority. The book ends with the critical changes of the late thirteenth century that established an urban network that was strong enough to survive the plagues, famines and wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule in the Río De La Plata
by Barbara Anne GansonThis ethnographic study is a revisionist view of the most significant and widely known mission system in Latin America--that of the Jesuit missions to the Guaraní Indians, who inhabited the border regions of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. It traces in detail the process of Indian adaptation to Spanish colonialism from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. The book demonstrates conclusively that the Guaraní were as instrumental in determining their destinies as were the Catholic Church and Spanish bureaucrats. They were neither passive victims of Spanish colonialism nor innocent "children" of the jungle, but important actors who shaped fundamentally the history of the Río de la Plata region. The Guaraní responded to European contact according to the dynamics of their own culture, their individual interests and experiences, and the changing political, economic, and social realities of the late Bourbon period.