Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexican Border by Rachel C. St. John

This book gives a concise, yet informative history of the border between the U.S. and Mexico, especially between El Paso and the Pacific Ocean. In so doing, it shows how different people and governments use the border--not just to control immigration, but also to, at times, challenge state sovereignty, collect revenue, avoid customs duties, gain a military advantage, and police morality. Indeed, the idea of fencing the border came late. In the conclusion, St. John lays out her cards: she believes that the border fence is not the best solution to the challenges of illegal immigration, and that the U.S. and Mexico should work together, along with the transnational community, to come up with a more flexible method of policing the border. I also learned more than I ever knew about the Mexican Revolution. A well-written and thought-provoking book.

Nineteenth-Century Geographies: The Transformation of Space from the Victorian Age to the American Century edited by Helena Michie and Ronald R. Thomas

This collection contains seventeen essays that together make the argument that conceptions of geography changed in the United Kingdom and the United States during the nineteenth century. They analyze cultural products to determine the ways in which people's relations to the spaces and places in which they lived changed. I found the essays, by in large, to be very smart, and the ones by Lipscomb on Cooper and Brady on the Southwest to be particularly helpful.

A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Houseman

This collection of poetry is mostly written in a pastoral mode. The verse itself is not bad, but sort of what I would expect for Victorian poetry. Mostly it's short and lyric, and has to do with people courting, dying young, and serving in war. I particularly like the penultimate poem, which I have come across before, whose first line is "Terrence, this is stupid stuff." There are intriguing contrasts between the Shropshire countryside and urban London, and between nature, which will continue to exist, and people, who die quickly.

Globish by Robert McCrum

This book tells the history of the English language and contends that in its many forms, it is now Globish, the new lingua franca, but one with more staying power than Latin or any previous language because of its openness to change, its use in business, and the role of technology in propagating it. The book is a fascinating read, and I can tell the author feels passionately about the language--as the book is full of examples of English at its most eloquent and powerful.

The Black Atlantic by Paul Gilroy

In this book Paul Gilroy stages an intervention in debates over modernism to contend that the Africanist experience is an important one that's often left out or not accounted for. He picks up Du Bois's notion of a double consciousness and claims that music is a particularly good place to see the Africanist and Europeanist influences. But rather than centering on one type of experience, Gilroy seeks to decenter culture and work against nationalist readings of culture born in a vacuum. I found this book really helpful as an introduction to ways to think transnationally.

The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca

This account of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca's journey from the coast of Florida through Texas to what is now the US Southwest blends a variety of genres. In part, it's an official relation to the king, part of Cabeza de Vaca's attempt to get the king to give him permission to keep exploring in the New World. As such, there's a fair amount of natural history (about the geography and the plants and animals that fill the land) and ethnography (about the people Cabeza de Vaca encounters). At times, Cabeza de Vaca's called upon to practice medicine, which usually consists of him conforming to indigenous expectations about ceremonial gestures and ritual actions (there's some cutting and cauterizing going on) while praying to the Catholic god to cure the people. Once he actually performs surgery to remove an old arrow. Cabeza de Vaca also uses his religious faith as a means of understanding his experience and as a possible motivation for getting the Spaniards to spend more time and energy settling the region. At the end of his captivity, when Cabeza de Vaca encounters Spaniards again, he seems estranged from them as well as from the native peoples with whom he's been living.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

This book resembles a found auto-biography: it purports to be a collection of writings by and about the fictional Harrison William Shepherd. He's practically an orphan from a very young age, but he develops a striking friendship with Frida Kahlo and Lev Trotsky, and, after Trotsky's assassination, makes a new life for himself in Asheville, North Carolina--at least until he's caught up in the Communist witch hunts following WWII. This book is both a delightful bildungsroman and a beautiful, if imaginary, glimpse into the lives of some remarkable historical figures. I would highly recommend this book.

Akhnaton by Agatha Christie

This play brings up big questions of both religion and imperialism. In telling the story of the rise and fall of an Egyptian king who embraced monotheism and humane concepts such as ending slavery, war, and oppression, Christie draws parallels between that king's religion and the Christian faith, and between the British and Egyptian empires. She also investigates the relationship between art, culture, and war, and the relationship between a king, his country, and the people.

The Cosmic Race by José Vasconcelos

I'm having trouble figuring out what to make of this essay. It maintains that the time is coming when the four races of the world will merge into a transcendent fifth race. There are religious overtones by the end. On one hand, the author's utopian dream is nothing to be dismissed, but on the other hand, he seems to want both a merging into equality and a superiority for Latin American peoples. I'll definitely need more time to think through this one.