Du Shaba au Katanga

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Alejandro R.H. Carbonell

La memoria incómoda es un testimonio personal de uno de los abogados que sobrevivieron a aquella espantosa matanza atribuida a la extrema derecha ocurrida en Madrid en 1977, en un despacho de abogados. En enero de 2017 se cumplen 40 años de aquéllos lamentables hechos que sucedieron en el umbral de la transición a la democracia en España. Cuatro abogados y un administrativo resultaron muertos y otros cuatro abogados heridos de gravedad. El libro (2002) escrito con la pulsión del instante y la serenidad del recuerdo cuenta aquellos hechos y muchos otros, que fueron consecuencia de aquel tiempo que trajo la libertad política a nuestro país. Esta es su tercera edición actualizada. Es un libro atípico, pero un testimonio imprescindible de la transición y por eso está en la calle; para que la historia de Atocha perviva en la memoria colectiva y como homenaje a los que murieron allí el 24 de Enero de 1977.

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Tina Rosenberg

Profiles the struggles of the people and leaders of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia as their nations endure the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

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Lina Barrios

The final volume of Barrios' excellent multi-volume study of local indigenous government in Guatemala. Includes a survey of recent historical development and case studies of Sololá, Quetzaltenango, Totonicapán and Chichicastenango.

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Carol Flake

New Orleans, home of the great American blowout bash - Mardi Gras - is the exotic city on the Bayou that thumbs its nose at the conservative spirit of the rest of the South. And Mardi Gras, that wild, uninhibited, frenzied festival of multiculturalism, music, sex, and the outer limits of debauchery, is the city's annual and legendary celebration of itself. But what really lies behind the masks and myths of a "pagan" festival older than baseball but less purely American than any other celebration? Despite all the glamour and popularity of Mardi Gras, few people know the real New Orleans - a city that is still socially stratified, racially divided, constrained by secrets. A city whose shocking double life was tragically exposed when national headlines publicized a proposal to desegregate the krewes, the quasi-cabalistic organizations that control the carnival and much of the town. Carol Flake returned to New Orleans, after more than a decade away, to chronicle a season of Carnival, to write about the paradox of an enduring rite in a crumbling city. Following the participants as they prepared for the parades and balls that make up the gala season, she found herself on a journey into a unique form of culture where ordinary standards of taste and behavior simply don't apply. She moved from subculture to subculture, from white uptown parlors and high society enclaves to French Quarter retreats, black jazz bars, and gay drag shows. She joined an all-women krewe for a float ride down Canal Street and dressed as a dancing girl in the satirical parade of the Krewe de Vieux. She visited the secret dens of elite traditional clubs and attended the open meetings of an embattled city council . Carnival, for all its rituals and disguises, mirrors New Orleans society, with its peculiar social hierarchies, its pockets of strange tradition, its madcap diversity, its partiality to drama and spectacle. The controversy surrounding Carnival is a war over the heart and soul of the city, over the dwindling base of power and money. New Orleans has succumbed to the same troubles that are tearing apart other American cities. In revealing the political, social, and cultural realities behind the grand illusions, Carol Flake has also discovered the common threads that just might bring the city back together. An intimate, surprising, sometimes shocking portrait of a great American city and a timely look at a unique part of the New South, New Orleans is destined to become a classic.