Books in the American Encounters/Global Interactions series

Marc Becker draws on recently released US government surveillance documents on the Ecuadorian left to chart social movement organizing efforts during the 1950s, showing how the local patterns and dynamics that shaped the development of the Ecuadorian left could be found throughout Latin American during the cold war.

Examines the history of banana-producing areas of Latin America and the Caribbean in comparative perspective, asking why different regions developed distinct patterns of property and labor mobilization. This collection also reveals how the banana industry marshaled workers of differing nationalities, ethnicities, and languages.

Author reconstructs the unwritten, taboo history of the Guatemalan civil war, focusing on the peasants who picked coffee, supported guerrilla movements of the 1970s and 1980s, and suffered the most when the military government retaliated with violence.

Filling in a key chapter in communications history, this title offers an examination of the rise of the "global media" between 1860 and 1930. It analyzes the connections between the development of a global communication infrastructure, the creation of national telegraph and wireless systems, and news agencies.

In 2005, human rights investigators stumbled on the archives of Guatemala's National Police. In Paper Cadavers, Kirsten Weld tells the story of the astonishing discovery and rescue of 75 million pages of evidence of state-sponsored crimes, and analyzes the repercussions for both the people and the state of Guatemala.

Within hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers, the idea that the September 11 attacks had "changed everything" permeated American popular and political discussion. Bringing together leading scholars of history, law, literature, and Islam, this book asks whether the attacks and their aftermath truly marked a transition in US.