The Alamo template.
Byline: Gemma Cruz-Araneta IF your blood pressure shoots up whenever you encounter views in direct contrast to those you have long held dear, then brace yourself for this totally Mexican position. Generations of pro-Americans have wept through many Hollywood remakes of "Remember, the Alamo!" Tourist...

Cottoning on: whether it's the disastrous environmental problems associated with its production or the aggressive trade tactics regularly employed by some of its producers, cotton presents consumers with an ethical minefield. But thanks to a series of new initiatives, says Victoria Lambert, it's becoming increasingly easy to purchase this clothing staple with a clear conscience.
[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Next time you pull on an ordinary cotton t-shirt, think of David and Goliath--and then ask yourself, whose side are you on? For the world's cotton producers are locked in an unequal struggle of huge proportions that could see the industry wiped out in some...

All the Raj.
Aditi Chatterji takes us on a tour of Calcutta to see how concentrated efforts are, at last, restoring its colonial treasures to their former glory CALCUTTA, PRESENTLY THE state capital of West Bengal in India, conjures up differing visions, ranging from the rosy `Second City of the...

Gas lines again?
Gas Lines Again? WITH OIL PRICES about half what they were in 1981, it is only natural for Time magazine, among others, to revive the old story that expensive oil would really be cheaper. Cheap oil shuts down domestic production, they say, so the U.S. ends up importing...

The heating oil spike.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-where was that greenhouse effect when we needed it? December, the U.S. Weather Service calculated, was the coldest month in about seventy years on the East Coast. The 12 million Americans who warm their homes with heating oil found their furnaces were using about half again as much...

The Backcountry Towns of Colonial Virginia.
The Backcountry Towns of Colonial Virginia. By Christopher E. Hendricks. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. Pp. xxii, 186. $36.00, ISBN 978-1-57233-543-1.) Christopher E. Hendricks's book is a good start on a big subject. That subject is not by necessity colonial, nor is it limited to the...

Downtown was vibrant; Mercantile exchange was lifeblood of Main Street.
Byline: Ed Patenaude COLUMN: SO I'VE HEARD The country was beginning to break from the Great Depression, and William A. Franklin, just 21 years old, decided to take a flier into the retail business, opening a women's dress shop on Webster's Main Street. ...

Secret History of Confederate Diplomacy Abroad: Edwin De Leon, Late Confidential Agent of the Confederate Department of State in Europe.
Secret History of Confederate Diplomacy Abroad: Edwin De Leon, Late Confidential Agent of the Confederate Department of State in Europe. Edited by William C. Davis. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, c. 2005. Pp. xxxii, 224. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-7006-1411-0.) In its original publication in 1867-1868 in the New...

Le commerce du coton en Mediterranee a la fin du Moyen Age.
9789004162266 Le commerce du coton en Mediterranee a la fin du Moyen Age. Nam, Jong-Kuk. BRILL 2007 567 pages $184.00 Hardcover The medieval Mediterranean; v.68 HF395 Nam (history, Dongguk...

Robin Hood in reverse: The relentless over-production of food in the US is destroying the rest of the world's agriculture. Anuradha Mittal takes a look at the subsidies driving it. (Subsidies).
THE 2002 Farm Bill can be best described as welfare with a difference, robbing the poor to pay the rich. While the Bill is a big bonanza for large producers of favored crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton, small family farms are shortchanged. Vast industrial farms...