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Image one: E-book titled Discovering the Olmecs: An Unconventional History (2014) - synopsis: The Olmecs are renowned for their massive carved stone heads and other sculptures, the first stone monuments produced in Mesoamerica. Seven decades of archaeological research have given us many insights into the lifeways of the Olmecs, who inhabited parts of the modern Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco from around 1150 to 400 BC. Beginning with the first modern explorations in the 1920s, David Grove recounts how generations of archaeologists and local residents have uncovered the Olmec past and pieced together a portrait of this ancient civilization that left no written records.
Image two: E-book titled Island at War: Puerto Rico in the Crucible of the Second World War (2015) - synopsis: Despite Puerto Rico being the hub of the United States’ naval response to the German blockade of the Caribbean, there is very little published scholarship on the island’s heavy involvement in the global conflict of World War II. Recently, a new generation of scholars has been compiling interdisciplinary research with fresh insights about the profound wartime changes, which in turn generated conditions for the rapid economic, social, and political development of postwar Puerto Rico. Island at War brings together outstanding new research on Puerto Rico, covering ten distinct topics written by nine distinguished scholars from the Caribbean and beyond.
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Image one: E-book titled Latina/os and World War II: Mobility, Agency, and Ideology (2014) - synopsis: The first book-length study of Latina/o experiences in World War II over a wide spectrum of identities and ancestries--from Cuban American, Spanish American, and Mexican American segments to the under-studied Afro-Latino experience – Latina/os and World War II probes the controversial aspects of Latina/o soldiering and citizenship in the war, the repercussions of which defined the West during the twentieth century. Spanning imaginative productions, such as vaudeville and the masculinity of the “soldado razo” theatrical performances; military segregation and the postwar lives of veterans; Tejanas on the home front; journalism and youth activism; and other underreported aspects of the wartime experience, the essays collected in this volume showcase rarely seen recollections.
Image two: E-book titled After the Blessing: Mexican American Veterans of WWII Tell Their Stories (2022) - synopsis: Many Catholic families blessed their children before they left home. After the Blessing tells the stories of many young Mexican Americans who left home to fight for their country. During the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), many families fled Mexico to prevent their underage sons from being forced to fight. Ironically, the offspring of these immigrants often ended up across the ocean in a much larger war. Despite the bias and mistreatment most Mexican Americans faced in the US, some 500,000 fought bravely for their country during World War II.