Books about Colombian from Amazon.com

Secrets of Colombian Cooking provides a window into the diverse cuisine of this little-known South American nation. Author Patricia McCausland-Gallo, a native Colombian, traveled throughout the many regions of Colombia to gather the most authentic dishes. With a wide range of recipes and a glossary of typical ingredients, this book acquaints cooks with the array of foods that make up Colombian cuisine, including sweet and hot peppers, plantains, tamarind, gooseberries, papayas, guavas, and tree tomatoes.

From the coffee and cacao grown high in the Andes Mountains to the many tropical fruits of the Caribbean and Amazonian regions, the great cattle farms on the plains, and bountiful seafood from the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, Colombia is a country of vast and exotic culinary creations. Secrets of Colombian Cooking presents the wide spectrum of Colombian cuisine to home cooks in more than 175 inviting recipes from simple, hearty sancochos (soups and stews prepared differently in every region) to more exotic fare such as Langosta al Coco (Lobster in Coconut Sauce) and Ají de Uchuvas (Yellow Gooseberry Sauce). Complete with b/w photographs.

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Price: $15.54 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Can you imagine a shipwrecked sailor living on air and seaweed for eight days? Can you imagine a trail of yellow butterflies fluttering their wings to songs of love? Once, there was a little boy named Gabito who could. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is perhaps one of the most brilliant writers of our time. He is a tremendous figure, enormously talented, and unabashedly admired. This is his story, lovingly told, for children to enjoy. Using the imagery from his novels, Monica Brown traces the novelist's life in this creative nonfiction picture book from his childhood in Colombia to today. This is an inspiring story about an inspiring life, full of imagination and beauty..
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No writer alive today exerts the magical appeal of Gabriel García Márquez. Now, in the long-awaited first volume of his autobiography, he tells the story of his life from his birth in 1927 to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to his wife. The result is as spectacular as his finest fiction

Here is García Márquez’s shimmering evocation of his childhood home of Aracataca, the basis of the fictional Macondo. Here are the members of his ebulliently eccentric family. Here are the forces that turned him into a writer. Warm, revealing, abounding in images so vivid that we seem to be remembering them ourselves, Living to Tell the Taleis a work of enchantment..
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Imagine a world where healing with plants takes place daily, and where ritual and magic are as much a part of normal life as sitting down to a meal. This is the enchanting world that we are introduced to in VINE OF THE SOUL: MEDICINE MEN, THEIR PLANTS AND RITUALS IN THE COLOMBIAN AMAZONIA; it is a world which was threatened by extinction back in 1941 when the author, Dr. Richard Evans Schultes, first began his 14-year-long visit, and it is threatened even more today. In fact, its 1941 version could already be said to be extinct. Because of the importance (from anthropological, botanical, historical and humanistic points of view) of this title, Synergetic Press, which had published a first edition previously, produced the second edition, cited here, with the addition of front and back matter by three of the most attentive conservationists of our time. VINE OF THE SOUL features a preface by National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis, a foreword by former director of the Royal Botanical Gardens (at Kew, England) Sir Ghillean Prance, and an epilogue by Director of the Institute of Economic Botany (at the NY Botanical Gardens) Michael Balick. VINE OF THE SOUL is a collection of essays and photographs (more than 160) depicting life in the Amazon rainforest during the years that Schultes lived there. While Schultes, who proved to have a great eye for lighting, composition and subject matter, took the photos himself, the essays are co-authored by botanist extraordinaire Robert F. Raffauf. As plants are a priority for the indigenous peoples of the rainforest just as they are for Schultes and Raffauf plants and the people who use them (particularly medicine men, or payés) constitute much of the subject matter. Schultes learned a great deal from his indigenous mentors; he collected more than 20,000 specimens, discovered some 300 species new to science, and chronicled more than 2000 medicinal plants which are in use (many of them saving lives) in the pharmaceutical world today. But he also learned something more. For the indigenous people, plants are not only for healing but also and perhaps more importantly for leaving behind the ordinary world and connecting to the spiritual world. Vine of the Soul, in fact, is a translation for Ayahuasaca, the preferred sacred plant for most payés and the one most likely to link them to their mystical past. When a payé returns from this kind of excursion, he brings back with him information that is useful for his tribe: everything from plant prescriptions to information on births and deaths to choice building sites, to messages from ancestors. And while the payé is generally the only one to enter the supernatural world at this level, trancelike states induced with less potent plants provide more ordinary folk with spiritual access as well. In addition to their spellbinding relationship with plants, we learn about the myths, arts, dances, festivals, jewelry, clothing and social habits of the many tribes that Schultes (who had learned seven indigenous languages by the time he left) encountered. The book, which is a companion title to WHERE THE GODS REIGN is destined to be remain the most consequential work on this subject matter..
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Pocos libros han despertado tanta expectación en todo el mundo como la autobiografía de Gabriel García Márquez, autor de Cien años de soledad y ganador del Premio Nobel de Literatura En sus memorias, García Márquez nos habla de su infancia y primera juventud en Colombia, ofreciéndonos una crónica de los años que modelaron su imaginación y que, andando el tiempo, cristalizarían en algunos de los relatos y novelas más importantes del siglo XX. En sus páginas el lector se encontrará con episodios como el conmovedor retrato de sus abuelos, con quienes se crió en su aldea natal de Aracataca, o la descripción del asesinato de un candidato presidencial en Bogotá, del que fue testigo ocular. García Márquez da cuenta de las gentes, los lugares y los sucesos que le sirvieron de acicate como periodista y como narrador. Desbordante de humor y sabiduría, el autor se adentra por igual en los misterios de la escritura y de la vida, brindándonos un relato apasionante de la búsqueda de sus orígenes que despierta ecos de los mejores momentos de la prosa de su ficción. Además de un escrito de extraordinario mérito literario, Vivir para contarla constituyeuna guía indispensable para entender el resto de su obra..
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Running late for work one morning in September 1994, Tom Hargrove, communications director for an international agricultural aid organization in Cali, Colombia, was mildly annoyed when he spotted a roadblock, or retén, manned by soldiers in fatigues. He chafed at the delay, but told himself that guerrillas and kidnappers didn't operate on a main highway in broad daylight.

But Hargrove had been dreadfully mistaken. Despite his assertions that he worked for a non-profit agricultural agency, he was forced at gunpoint into a vehicle and driven into the mountains by communist narco-terrorists who believed he was a valuable hostage.

For almost a year, Hargrove was held by the guerillas and moved from one remote location to another. To maintain his grip on sanity, he recorded his daily experiences in makeshift journals: in a checkbook; on children's notebooks; and on scraps of paper scrounged during his ordeal.

Hargrove's story, originally published in 1995, was the basis for the major motion picture Proof of Life, starring Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan. Now available again in paperback, Long March to Freedom chronicles one man's spirited determination to hang onto life and faith amid nearly impossible circumstances..
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most influential Latin American writers of the twentieth century. His unique literary creativity is rooted in the history of the region, with all its social and political implications.

In this beautifully written examination of Garcia Marquez and his work, Gene Bell-Villada traces the major forces that have shaped the Colombian novelist and describes his life, his personality, and his political opinions. He considers Garcia Marquez's place in world literature and analyzes his short fiction and all of his novels from the great and complex One Hundred Years of Solitude—a cultural phenomenon the likes of which we have seldom seen—through Love in the Time of Cholera. He shows why Garcia Marquez has achieved a confluence of high art and popular success that is virtually unique in the twentieth century.

Bell-Villada examines the narrative works of Garcia Marquez for their historical and human content, for their literary technique and structure, and for their expert use of fantasy, ribaldry, humor, and satire. He describes Garcia Marquez as a global phenomenon and as a local boy, as a Nobel Laureate and as a Latin American Everyman, as a political writer and as a novelist of love.

The book will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers—generalists who enjoy his novels, teachers and students, and literary specialists and Latin Americanists investigating the culture and politics of the region..
Price: $12.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

While the core of VINE OF THE SOUL (the companion book to WHERE THE GODS REIGN), is the Amazonian plant life and the indigenous people s uses for it, WHERE THE GODS REIGN focuses primarily on the people themselves though of course, Schultz (who was dubbed the father of ethnobotany by Prince Philip himself) is first and foremost a botanist and plants do figure into the mix: Schultes describes devil s gardens empty patches in the otherwise thick forests where, for no apparent (or scientific) reason, nothing will grow with the same precision and wonderment with which he discusses the many plants that grow upon other plants in their effort to get their share of the sun...and much more. But in this fine volume he begins with information about the histories of the various tribes and the lay of the lands on which they live; savannahs, dense forests, quartzite cliffs, sandstone mountains and caves and thunderous waterfalls are all accounted for; and all of his lyrical essays are accompanied by stunning black and white photographs. (There are over 140 photos in the book.) Schultes is often poetic here as well, describing not only the geography but, often, the exquisite emotions one experiences observing it in different seasons or different times of the day. Likewise, Schultes describes the people lovingly. He delights in their ability to be happy in spite of poverty, sickness, and, particularly in the case of the women, very hard work. He marvels at their relationships with animals, many of which they tame, so that their homes are surrounded by birds, monkeys, deer, and even boa constrictors (which live in the rafters and keep the mice and rat populations at bay). He marvels that while the children are almost never punished and enjoy a high degree of freedom (especially the boys), they show great respect for their elders as well as a great curiosity and appreciation for their surroundings. Schultes pleasure in the land and its people is our pleasure. He is a remarkable scientist and a most eloquent guide. Reading WHERE THE GODS REIGN is probably as close as most of us will ever get to the kind of experience Schultes had staying in Amazon basin and learning about the many very different alternatives to living a life. But one can t help but long for that experience too. The book threatens to make explorers out of all of us and a reader can t help but be disheartened upon remembering that there is not much left to explore. WHERE THE GODS REIGN is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the extraordinary history of the people of the Amazon rainforests..
Price: $20.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]