HISTORY · HISTORIA
E. Bradford Burns
Also known as: E.Bradford Burns, Bradford E. Burns
The recorded history of Brazil began with the arrival of the Portuguese.
— from Burns
Most acclaimed
Kinship with the land
1996
Pioneers moving into Iowa in the nineteenth century created a distinctly rural culture: family, farm, church, and school were its dominant institutions. After decades of settlement, however, several lively and perceptive generations interpreted their political, economic, and cultural environment - their Iowa - much more imaginatively; they offered such an abundant insight, understanding, meaning, and mission that they mentally and spiritually recreated Iowa. In Kinship with the Land historian Brad Burns celebrates this intense period of intellectual and cultural development. Through their novels, short stories, poems, essays, drawings, and paintings, Iowa's regionalists expressed a rich abstraction of people and place. They conferred meaning, imparted understanding, defined the soil and the folk, conveyed a sense of place. Grant Wood in his overalls - the quintessential symbol of sophisticated talent and rural values - clearly represented regionalism's spiritual solidarity with the land and the people who worked it. Burns lets these Iowans speak for themselves, then interprets their distinctive voices to present a cogent case for and an understanding of the rural in an overwhelmingly urban America. Kinship with the Land emphasizes the importance of Iowa's intellectual and cultural history and reaffirms the state's identity at the very moment that standardization threatens to eradicate it. By endowing Iowa with vibrant, independent art and literature, regionalists made refreshing sense of their environment. Readers from every state will appreciate their generous legacy.
Latin America
Latin America: An Introduction offers a contemporary, thematic analysis of the region that is grounded in Latin America's social, political, economic, and cultural past. Based on chapters from Harry Vanden and Gary Prevost's popular text, Politics of Latin America, this book provides an accessible and interesting discussion of a broad range of topics, including democracy, revolution, indigenous populations, culture, gender, religion, politics, economy, and relations with the United States. Offering balanced regional coverage, the book discusses such recent political, social, and economic developments as the failure of the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s to deliver promised prosperity; the related resurgence of progressive politics in the region, as manifested in the election of numerous left and center-left governments; and the strong role of numerous social movements in setting the region's political agenda in the new century. The authors analyze the continuing power of the United States in the region, as seen in the implementation of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), bilateral trade agreements with Chile and Peru, and the continued funding of Plan Colombia. They also discuss the role of various Latin American-based initiatives, including the expansion of MERCOSUR, the Bolivarian Alternative, and The Bank of the South. Providing a historical perspective for the challenges and problems facing the region today, Latin America: An Introduction's regionally balanced, multidisciplinary approach makes it an ideal text for introduction to Latin American studies courses.