A Most Imperfect Union
A Contrarian History of the United States
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Enough with the dead white men! The true story of the United States lies with its most overlooked and marginalized peoples—the workers, immigrants, housewives, and slaves who built America from the ground up, and who made this country what it is today. In A Most Imperfect Union, cultural critic Ilan Stavans and award-winning cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz present a vibrant history of these unsung Americans. In an irreverent, fast-paced narrative that challenges the conventional narrative of American history, Stavans and Alcaraz offer a fresh, controversial take on the philosophies, products, practices, and people—from Algonquin and African royals to early feminists, Puerto Rican radicals, and Arab immigrants—that have made America such an outsized and extraordinary land.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following up the creators' Latino USA: A Cartoon History (2000), this book demonstrates that comics may be the ideal form to express contrarian thinking in this case, alternate views of American history. One panel shows a straight portrait of John Quincy Adams penning an 1811 passage that justifies U.S. domination of all North America based on "divine providence," juxtaposed with a modern Latino who observes, "And you Gringos wonder why everyone hates you...." Throughout the book, Amherst professor Stavans and L.A. cartoonist Alcaraz cast their skeptical, sarcastic eyes on the accepted notion of America's steady progress as capably managed by upright white males. Alcaraz gets the point across using the hard-to-miss icons of editorial cartooning with a clean, cartoony style. One disadvantage of the contrarian approach is that it seems to amount to a random smattering of disparaging comments. But that's the point: our history is more complicated than most Americans suppose, shaped by a more diverse swarm of people than we want to imagine.
