The Book Of Unknown Americans Quotes

I felt the way I often felt in this country - simultaneously conspicuous and invisible, like an oddity whom everyone noticed but chose to ignore

We're the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they've been told they're supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we're not that bad, maybe even that we're a lot like them. And who would they hate then?

People do what they have to in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.

You shouldn't want to be like everyone else. Then you wouldn't be like you.

Because a place can do many things against you, and if it’s your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That’s how it works.

Modern man has lost the sense of wonder about the unknown and he treats it as an enemy.

Maybe it’s the instinct of every immigrant, born of necessity or of longing: Someplace else will be better than here. And the condition: if only I can get to that place.

Sleep was like wealth, elusive and for other people.

The truth was that I didn’t know which I was. I wasn’t allowed to claim the thing I felt and I didn’t feel the thing I was supposed to claim.

You can come back one day. Or I could come there." "Maybe." "I could find you." "Finding is for the things that are lost. You don't need to find me, Mayor.

I know some people here think we’re trying to take over, but we just want to be a part of it. We want to have our stake. This is our home, too.

In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.

What if God wants us to be happy? What if there’s nothing else around the bend? What if all our unhappiness is in the past and from here on out we get an uncomplicated life? Some people get that, you know. Why shouldn’t it be us?

We stood side by side and looked out at the vastness, the possibility of everything out there. Within the universe, I felt like a speck, but within myself I felt gigantic, the salt air filling my lungs, the roaring of the waves rushing in my ears.

I understood how easily and how quickly things could be snatched away.

People do what they have to in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.

English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it. Profesora Shields explained that in English there was no usted, no tu. There was only one word—you. It applied to all people. No one more distant or more familiar. You. They. Me. I. Us. We. There were no words that changed from feminine to masculine and back again depending on the speaker. A person was from New York. Not a woman from New York, not a man from New York. Simply a person.

You have to believe that you’re entitled to happiness.

Finding is for things that are lost. You don't need to find me, Mayor.

I wanted her to have the full, long life that every parent promises his or her child by the simple act of bringing that child into the world.

The characters were not unknown because they were illegal or didn't have the documents but because people didn't want to know them.

I learned something about grief. I had heard people say that when someone dies, it leaves a hole in the world. But it doesn't, I realized. Arturo was still everywhere. Something would happen and I would think, Wait until I tell Arturo. I kept turning around, expecting to see him. If he had disappeared completely, I thought, it might be easier. If I had no knowledge that he had ever existed, no evidence that he was ever part of our lives, it might have been bearable. And how wrong that sounded: part of our lives. As if he was something with boundaries, something that hadn't permeated us, flowed through us and in us and all around us. I learned something about grief. When someone dies, it doesn't leave a hole and that's the agony.

I came from México, but there’s a lot of people here who, when they hear that, they think I crawled out of hell.

When someone dies, it doesn't leave a hole, and that's the agony.

I didn't want to accept that in order to move forward, I had to walk through it. It was so much easier just to believe there was another path I could take around it and that at the end of that path would be the destination I wanted. It would be easier to want to end up at a lie, instead of the truth.

We would be thousands of miles apart from now on and we would go on with our lives and get older and change and grow, but we would never have to look for each other. Inside each of us, I was pretty sure, was a place for the other. Nothing that had happened and nothing that would ever happen would make that less true.

What kind of place required a man to work all day without being allowed to eat or drink? There had to be rules, didn’t there? This was America, after all.

Sleep was like wealth, elusive and for other people.

We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we’re not that bad, maybe even that we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate then?

I couldn't swallow. It had to be wrong. We had to be able to rewind. It couldn't be real. It felt so weightless. It felt like an idea, a particle of dust floating around in the air that hadn't landed yet.

We left a lot of things behind - not only physical objects, but our friends and of course our families, pieces of ourselves - all for the chance to see that light in Maribel's eyes. It's been difficult, yes, but I would do it all again. People do what they have to do in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.

Sometimes I think I would rather just remember it in my head, all those streets and the places I loved. The way it smelled of car exhaust and sweet fruit. The thickness of the heat. The sound of dogs barking in alleyways. That's the Panama I want to hold on to. Because a place can do many things against you, and if it's your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That's how it works.

I'd spent my whole life feeling like that. Like everybody else was onto something that I couldn't seem to find, that I didn't even know existed.I wanted to figure it out, the secret to having the easy life that everyone else seemed to have, where they fit in and were good at everything they tried. Year after year, I waited for it all to fall into place--every September I told myself, This year will be different--but year after year, it was all just the same.

It's in you,' my dad assured me once. 'You were born in Panamá. It's in your bones.' I spent a lot of time trying to find it in me, but usually I couldn’t. I felt more American than anything, but even that was up for debate according to the kids at school who’d taunted me over the years, asking me if I was related to Noriega, telling me to go back through the canal. The truth was that I didn’t know which I was. I wasn’t allowed to claim the thing I felt and I didn’t feel the thing I was supposed to claim.

There were torn between wanting to look back and wanting to exist absolutely in the new life they'd created

They were torn between wanting to look back and wanting to exist absolutely in the new life they'd created

Maybe it’s the instinct of every immigrant, born of necessity or of longing:

Contigo la milpa es rancho y el atole champurrado.

¡Estás más perdido que un juey bizco!

Just trying to blend in. That’s the way of the world.” “Well, that’s the way of America, at least,” my mom said.

You could trace it back infinitely. All these different veins, but who knew which one led to the heart?

No one here wants to admit it, but the United States is part of México’s problem. The United States is feeding the beast, man. I thought maybe if I came here, I could make a difference.

I mean, does anyone ever talk about why people are crossing? I can promise you it’s not with some grand ambition to come here and ruin everything for the gringo chingaos. People are desperate, man.

I stopped moving backwards, trying to recapture the past, there might be a future waiting for me, waiting for us, a future that would reveal itself if only I turned around and looked, and that once I did, I could start to move toward it.

Of the many things America loves to pat itself on the back about, one of the things is an obsession with exploration, or the desire to seek places beyond the places you are from or the places you have been. It is one of the many parts in the overwhelming collage of American Freedom that Americans are told was fought for and won. The Green Book is fascinating as a not-so-distant relic because it pushes back against that particular American notion. For whom is exploration treacherous? When is it a good idea to maybe not venture out into the vast unknown, and who is the return on the investment of curiosity?

Life got its tentacles around you, its hooks into your heart, and suddenly you come awake as if for the first time, and you are standing in a part of the town where the air is sweet—your face flushed, your chest thumping, your stomach a planet, your heart a planet, your every organ a separate planet, all of it of a piece though the pieces turn separately, O silent indications of the inevitable, as among the natural restraints of winter and good sense, life blows you apart in her arms.

Roosevelt had inspired Americans to return to honest public men, and after decades of shirking and evasion of their civic duty, Americans had begun “to look at themselves and their institutions straight; to perceive that Firecrackers and Orations once a year, and selling your vote or casting it for unknown nobodies, are not enough attention to pay to the Republic.’’ To celebrate this new, principled America, Wister had written The Virginian. “If this book be anything more than an American story, it is an expression of American faith.

But I worry what it would be like after all this time. We thought it was unrecognizable when we left, but I have a feeling it would be more unrecognizable now. Sometimes I think I would rather just remember it in my head, all those streets and places I loved. The way it smelled of car exhaust and sweet fruit. The thickness of the heat. The sound of dogs barking in alleyways. That’s the Panamá I want to hold on to. Because a place can do many things against you, and if it’s your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That’s how it works.

Maybe it’s the instinct of every immigrant, born of necessity or of longing: Someplace else will be better than here. And the condition: if only I can get to that place. It took us a long time to be able to come. We applied and waited to be approved. We traveled for days. We left a lot of things behind—not only physical objects, but our friends and of course our families, pieces of ourselves—all for the chance to see that light in Maribel’s eyes. It’s been difficult, yes, but I would do it all again. People do what they have to in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.

You don’t understand,” my dad said. “They stop you.” “Who? What are you talking about?” my mom asked. “That’s why I was being cautious.” “Who stops you?” “The police. If you’re white, or maybe Oriental, they let you drive however you want. But if you’re not, they stop you.” “Who told you that?” “The guys at the diner. That’s what they say. If you’re black or if you’re brown, they automatically think you’ve done something wrong.” “Rafa, that’s ridiculous. We’ve lived here for fifteen years. We’re citizens.” “The police don’t know that by looking at us. They see a brown face through the windshield and boom! Sirens!” My mom shook her head. “That’s what that was about?” “I didn’t want to give them reason to stop me.” “You were driving like a blind man, Rafa. That will give them reason to stop you.” “Everybody else just has to obey the law. We have to obey it twice as well.” “But that doesn’t mean you have to go twice as slow as everybody else!” The light turned green and my dad brought the car out of first. We cruised under the overpass, a shadow draping over the car like a blanket. “Next time, just try to blend in with everyone else and you’ll be fine,” my mom offered. “The way of the world,” my dad said. “What?” my mom asked as we emerged back into the sunlight. “Just trying to blend in. That’s the way of the world.” “Well, that’s the way of America, at least,” my mom said.

We like to think of the old-fashioned American classics as children's books. Just childishness, on our part. The old American art-speech contains an alien quality, which belongs to the American continent and to nowhere else. But, of course, so long as we insist on reading the books as children's tales, we miss all that. One wonders what the proper high-brow Romans of the third and fourth or later centuries read into the strange utterances of Lucretius or Apuleius or Tertullian, Augustine or Athanasius. The uncanny voice of Iberian Spain, the weirdness of old Carthage, the passion of Libya and North Africa; you may bet the proper old Romans never heard these at all. They read old Latin inference over the top of it, as we read old European inference over the top of Poe or Hawthorne. It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen. There is a new voice in the old American classics. The world has declined to hear it, and has blabbed about children's stories. Why?—Out of fear. The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. And it is like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff for ages. It hurts horribly. The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience. It can only dodge. The world is a great dodger, and the Americans the greatest. Because they dodge their own very selves.

And so our tutorials descended, from the metaphysical to the merely physical... not so much down to earth as down to the carpet, do you remember? That was the year of 'The Concept of Knowledge', your masterpiece, and the last decent title left after Ryle bagged 'The Concept of Mind' and Archie bagged 'The Problem of Mind' and Ayer bagged 'The Problem of Knowledge' - and 'The Concept of Knowledge' might have made you if you had written it, but we were still on the carpet when an American with an Italian name working in Melbourne bagged it for a rather bad book which sold four copies in London, three to unknown purchasers and the fourth to yourself. He'd stolen a march while you were still comparing knowledge in the sense of having-experience-of, with knowledge in the sense of being-acquainted-with, and knowledge in the sense of inferring facts with knowledge in the sense of comprehending truths, and all the time as you got more and more acquainted with, though no more comprehending of, the symbolic patterns on my Persian carpet, it was knowing in the biblical sense of screwing that you were learning about and maybe there's a book in you yet

Who is America named after? Not the Italian merchant and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci, but Richard Ameryk, a Welshman and wealthy Bristol merchant. Ameryk was the chief investor in the second transatlantic voyage of John Cabot—the English name of the Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto, whose voyages in 1497 and 1498 laid the groundwork for the later British claim to Canada. He moved to London from Genoa in 1484 and was authorized by King Henry VII to search for unknown lands to the west. On his little ship Matthew, Cabot reached Labrador in May 1497 and became the first recorded European to set foot on American soil, predating Vespucci by two years. Cabot mapped the North American coastline from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. As the chief patron of the voyage, Richard Ameryk would have expected discoveries to be named after him. There is a record in the Bristol calendar for that year: “…on Saint John the Baptist’s day [June 24], the land of America was found by the merchants of Bristowe, in a ship of Bristowe called the Mathew,” which clearly suggests this is what happened. Although the original manuscript of this calendar has not survived, there are a number of references to it in other contemporary documents. This is the first use of the term America to refer to the new continent. The earliest surviving map to use the name is Martin Waldseemüller’s great map of the world of 1507, but it only applied to South America. In his notes Waldseemüller makes the assumption that the name is derived from a Latin version of Amerigo Vespucci’s first name, because Vespucci had discovered and mapped the South American coast from 1500 to 1502. This suggests he didn’t know for sure and was trying to account for a name he had seen on other maps, possibly Cabot’s. The only place where the name “America” was known and used was Bristol—not somewhere the France-based Waldseemüller was likely to visit. Significantly, he replaced “America” with “Terra Incognita” in his world map of 1513. Vespucci never reached North America. All the early maps and trade were British. Nor did he ever use the name of America for his discovery. There’s a good reason for this. New countries or continents were never named after a person’s first name, but always after the second (as in Tasmania, Van Diemen’s Land, or the Cook Islands). America would have become Vespucci Land (or Vespuccia) if the Italian explorer had consciously given his name to it.

Speech to the Reichstag Berlin, December 11 Deputies! Men of the German Reichstag! Ever since the rejection of my last peace proposal in July 1940, we have been aware that this war has to be fought to the bitter end. That the Anglo-American, Jewish-capitalist world formed a front with Bolshevism does not come as a surprise to us National Socialists. At home, we found them in the same union, and we succeeded in our struggle at home by defeating our enemies after a sixteen-year-long struggle for power. When I decided twenty-three years ago to enter politics in order to reverse the decline of the nation, I was a nameless, unknown soldier. Many of you know how difficult the first years of this struggle were. The way from a small movement of seven men to the taking over of responsible government on January 30, 1933, was so miraculous that Providence itself must have made it possible through its blessings. Today, I head the strongest army in the world, the mightiest air force, and a proud navy. Behind me, I am conscious of the sworn community of the party, which made me great and which became great through me. The enemies that I confront have been known to be our enemies for over twenty years. Alas, the road that lies ahead of me cannot be compared to the one lying behind me. The German Volk realizes the decisiveness of the hour for its existence. Under the most difficult circumstances, millions of soldiers are obediently and loyally doing their duty. The American President and his plutocratic clique have called us a people of have nots. That is right! And these have-nots want to live. In any event, they will not allow the owners to rob them of the little that they have to live on. My party comrades, you know my relentless resolve to conclude a struggle victoriously once it has begun. You know my intention not to shy away from anything in such a fight and to break all the resistance that has to be broken. In my speech on September 1, 1939, I assured you that, in this struggle, neither the force of arms nor time will defeat Germany. I want to assure my enemies that neither will the force of arms nor time defeat us, but neither inner doubts make us falter in the fulfillment of our duty. When we consider the sacrifices of our soldiers, how they risk their lives, then the sacrifices of the homeland become completely insignificant and unimportant. When we think of the numbers of those who, generations before us, fell for the existence and greatness of the German Volk, then we become all the more aware of the greatness of the duty imposed on us. Whoever seeks to forsake this duty has no right to expect treatment as a Volksgenosse in our midst. Therefore, no one can expect to live who thinks that he can depreciate the front’s sacrifices at home. Irrespective of the form of disguise for this attempt to disrupt this German front, to undermine this Volk’s willingness to resist, to weaken the authority of this regime, to sabotage the efforts of the homeland, the offender will fall! There will be only one difference: the soldier honorably makes this sacrifice at the front, while the other, who wishes to depreciate this honorable sacrifice, dies in shame. Our enemies should not deceive themselves. In the two thousand years of the history known to us, our German Volk has never been more unified and united than it is today. The Lord of the Worlds has done so many great things for us in the last years that we bow in gratitude before Providence, which has permitted us to be members of such a great Volk. We thank Him that, in view of past and future generations of the German Volk, we were also allowed to enter our names honorably in the undying book of German history.

A Letter to the Reader I thought my dog dying was going to kill me. If I’m being honest, I still think it, some days. Most days. If I’m being honest, I still think it every day. Soul-mutt. Best friend. Not everyone understands, or will. That’s fine. I’ve never been one to want to share in grief, never been one to share much of anything. Only child, writer. A dog removes itself from the pack to lick wounds clean. A dog goes off, alone, to die. But we all know it—a family member, a friend, the sudden glazing of the eyes, the feel of a heart stopping beneath our hand. Our souls and selves dropping pieces each time someone exits this earth. Our identities, foundations shaken. Even sometimes bulldozed to nothing. This one brought me to my knees. At the time of writing this note, I can honestly say, I have never felt anything like this. I am truly surprised it hasn’t killed me. I always knew Barghest was going to die. Barghest’s death was (with the deaths of the others) the worst thing I could think of, and my job as I see it is to explore all the worsts. And all the bests, too. This book, or more accurately, an early, now unrecognizable version of it, was the first thing I ever seriously wrote. It was also what got me started on this path of Writer. Someone read this early snippet and believed in it, in me. This was a story that I wanted to tell from day one, ideas that hounded me then and have for all the years since. It’s taken ten years, an education, all the events of a decade of life, and more drafts than I’d like to count for me to tell this story in a way that felt right. In a way that is (I hope) befitting of you, most precious reader. And these dogged questions of guilt, shame, faith have nipped at my heels through everything. Funny, how they always draw just enough blood to keep us from running full tilt. But now. In the wake of a loss that has shaken me more than any I’ve lived through before, in a moment in which I find myself, like Sophie, questioning everything, questioning what the point of being here is at all, I have to say, It all feels very human and very small to confine and bind ourselves to anything that seeks to diminish us. This world and universe and existence is so expansive and evolving, and we choose to let ourselves be crippled by someone else’s ideas. We share life with mortality. We will die. Everyone we love will die. We will all face the dark. Together, or separate. We just don’t know. There is no self-help book, no textbook, no how-to that can tell us, definitively, what comes after. By the time any of us has the answers, we won’t be here to write them. None of us knows, even if we think we do. But here is what I do know: We live with death. And horror chooses not to turn away from it. Horror looks the darkness in the eyes. Horror dances with the absence, the loss. Explores ways for us—you, the reader, and me—to take it in our arms and spin around together. Ways to embrace the centrifugal force that is human striving, human searching. Mortal life. Dogs die. Humans die. We live with it, whether we want to or not. But from choosing to look, choosing not to turn away, from our embrace in the darkness, I hope that guilt and shame and any idea invented to hold you down in this glorious, nearly blinding existence, will seem, at the end of it all, very, very small. You, and me, spinning too fast for them to catch us. Thank you for continuing on this journey with me. With my characters, who are of course, now yours. These questions and worlds that I humbly share with you. That now belong to you. And while we keep hurtling through the unknown, as we spin round and round, I want to say, Here’s to dancing, book by book, question by question, through this vast, shining existence. Together.

Is this what school was like in the United States? It was like theater.

And yet, what else could he do but try the next

But you’re worried?” Arturo asked. I attempted a smile. “No.” “You’re worried about something.” I stared at him and shook my head lightly. “Yes, you are. You worry about everything. You’re a true mexicana. A fatalist.

But my dad had argued that he didn’t know the language of cars. To him, everything had its own language—the language of breakfast, the language of business, the language of politics, and on and on. In Spanish he knew all the languages, but for as long as he’d been speaking English, he believed he knew it only in certain realms.

It’s a shame about her, isn’t it? But when I see you with her, the two of you seem to be having actual conversations. Like real people.

She had been waiting for him, every day pouring cupfuls of water into the pots that held his plants, turning them in the sunlight, taking care of them because she thought it was a way of taking care of him.

I learned something about grief. When someone dies, it doesn’t leave a hole, and that’s the agony.

I mean … I lost myself. In between.” “Oh,” I said, and then I just sat there, because something about that idea—that you could be one person in one moment and then wake up and be completely different—punched me in the gut.

We knew from the outset and in a terribly selfish way that our interest lay only in each other.

I had learned by then that Maribel liked to think of herself as a rebel. And yet she managed only small insurrections.

At the diner, customers used to come in all the time and say, ‘I’m not a morning person.’ Usually right before or right after they ordered coffee. But what? The world is divided into morning people and afternoon people and night people?

All we wanted was the simplest things: to eat good food, to sleep at night, to smile, to laugh, to be well.

Americanah; Ayad Akhtar, American Dervish; Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents; Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Teju Cole, Open City; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Nell Freudenberger, The Newlyweds; Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban and King of Cuba; Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker.

I’m real tall when I stand on my charisma. – Harlan Ellison, Science Fiction Writer You can always come back, but you’ve got to come back better. If you come back worse, or even the same, you’re dead. – Phil Spector You get to the point where you have to change everything – change your looks, change your money, change your sex, change your women because of the business. – Mick Jagger We’ve always been fascinated by movie stars and singers, but the fascination with people who really have nothing to offer is something new. – Carl Hiaasen, American Writer Charisma. You can’t buy it. You can’t make it. And you sure can’t fake it. – Unknown. Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. -Groucho Marx

There was only one word—you. It applied to all people. Everyone equal. No one higher or lower than anyone else. No one more distant or more familiar. You. They. Me. I. Us. We. There were no words that changed from feminine to masculine and back again depending on the speaker. A person was from New York. Not a woman from New York, not a man from New York. Simply a person.

By the 18th century, the Mound Builder hypothesis had become firmly entrenched in public opinion as the leading explanation of North American prehistory (13). Scholars and antiquarians continued to debate the identity of the Mound Builders into the 19th century, with the majority agreeing that they were not the ancestors of Native Americans. President Andrew Jackson explicitly cited this hypothesis as partial justification for the Indian Removal Act of 1830, barely 40 years after Jefferson published his book. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the west, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated, or has disappeared, to make room for the existing savage tribes (14). Thus did the idea of Manifest Destiny become inexorably linked with concepts of racial categories. When someone asks me why I get so incensed about the concepts of “lost civilizations” and “Mound Builders” that are promoted by cable “history” shows, I simply remind them of this: In the years that followed Jackson’s signing of the Indian Removal Act, over 60,000 Native Americans were expelled from their lands and forcibly relocated west of the Mississippi River. Thousands of people—including children and elders—died at the hands of the US government, which explicitly cited this mythology as one of its justifications.

Levenda’s study is broad and deep, a life’s work that runs to volumes. What distinguishes it from other efforts, such as those of Pasolini, is not merely its comprehensiveness. Rather, it is Levenda’s realization that a matrix of politics and violence is incapable of explaining the demented century that shuddered to an end in Manhattan, not so long ago. What’s needed is a third dimension, and that dimension, he tells us, is “the occult.” By this, Levenda means something broader than a mix of magic and religion. When he writes of the occult, he means to include whatever is secret, hidden, or unknown. Add this dimension to those of politics and violence, and the century shivers into focus. Sinister Forces is about evil in what is now the digital age: Evil 2.0.

Harry H. Laughlin was highly important for the Nazi crusade to breed a “master race.” This American positioned himself to have a significant effect on the world’s population. During his career Laughlin would: ~ Write the “Model Eugenical Law” that the Nazis used to draft portions of the Nuremberg decrees that led to The Holocaust. ~ Be appointed as “expert” witness for the U.S. Congress when the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act was passed. The 1924 Act would prevent many Jewish refugees from reaching the safety of U.S. shores during The Holocaust. ~ Provide the "scientific" basis for the 1927 Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case that made "eugenic sterilization" legal in the United States. This paved the way for 80,000 Americans to be sterilized against their will. ~ Defend Hitler's Nuremberg decrees as “scientifically” sound in order to dispel international criticism. ~ Create the political organization that ensured that the “science” of eugenics would survive the negative taint of The Holocaust. This organization would be instrumental in the Jim Crow era of legislative racism. H.H. Laughlin was given an honorary degree from Heidelberg University by Hitler's government, specifically for these accomplishments. Yet, no one has ever written a book on Laughlin. Despite the very large amount of books about The Holocaust, Laughlin is largely unknown outside of academic circles. The Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. gave this author permission to survey its internal correspondence leading up to The Holocaust and before the Institution retired Laughlin. These documents have not been seen for decades. They are the backbone of this book. The story line intensifies as the Carnegie leadership comes to the horrible realization that one of its most recognized scientists was supporting Hitler’s regime.

I kissed her again and again and again, greedily, like I was making up for the time I'd lost, like I was making up for all the times I might not get to kiss her again once our parents found out what we'd done, like I was making up for my whole life when I hadn't known her, which seemed unbelievable and like a crime.

I thought suddenly, what is the meaning of all these things? All these bags and bags I've been packing? We could take everything we have with us. We could take every single thing that every single person in the world has ever had. But not of it would mean anything to me. Because no matter how much I took and no no matter how much I had for the rest of my life, I didn't have him anymore. I could have piled everything from here straight to heaven. None of it was him.

Maybe it was denial, but maybe it was her only way of holding on to someone she had loved. Maybe we should all be so passionate.

But it was only a word- justice. It was only a concept, and it wasn't enough.

I want to be given the benefit of the doubt. When I walk down the street, I don't want people to look at me and see a criminal or someone that they can spit on or beat up. I want them to see a guy who has just as much right to be here as they do, or a guy who works hard, or a guy who loves his family, or a guy who's just trying to do the right things. I wish just one of those people, just one, would actually talk to me, talk to my friends, man. And yes, you can talk to us in English. I know English better than you, I bet. But none of them even want to try. We're the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they've been told they're supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we're not that bad, maybe even that we're a lot like them. And who would they hate then?

George Mumford, a Newton-based mindfulness teacher, one such moment took place in 1993, at the Omega Institute, a holistic learning center in Rhinebeck, New York. The center was hosting a retreat devoted to mindfulness meditation, the clear-your-head habit in which participants sit quietly and focus on their breathing. Leading the session: meditation megastar Jon Kabat-Zinn. Originally trained as a molecular biologist at MIT, Kabat-Zinn had gone on to revolutionize the meditation world in the 1970s by creating a more secularized version of the practice, one focused less on Buddhism and more on stress reduction and other health benefits. After dinner one night, Kabat-Zinn was giving a talk about his work, clicking through a slide show to give the audience something to look at. At one point he displayed a slide of Mumford. Mumford had been a star high school basketball player who’d subsequently hit hard times as a heroin addict, Kabat-Zinn explained. By the early 1980s, however, he’d embraced meditation and gotten sober. Now Mumford taught meditation to prison inmates and other unlikely students. Kabat-Zinn explained how they were able to relate to Mumford because of his tough upbringing, his openness about his addiction — and because, like many inmates, he’s African-American. Kabat-Zinn’s description of Mumford didn’t seem to affect most Omega visitors, but one participant immediately took notice: June Jackson, whose husband had just coached the Chicago Bulls to their third consecutive NBA championship. Phil Jackson had spent years studying Buddhism and Native American spirituality and was a devoted meditator. Yet his efforts to get Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and their teammates to embrace mindfulness was meeting with only limited success. “June took one look at George and said, ‘He could totally connect with Phil’s players,’ ’’ Kabat-Zinn recalls. So he provided an introduction. Soon Mumford was in Chicago, gathering some of the world’s most famous athletes in a darkened room and telling them to focus on their breathing. Mumford spent the next five years working with the Bulls, frequently sitting behind the bench, as they won three more championships. In 1999 Mumford followed Phil Jackson to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he helped turn Kobe Bryant into an outspoken adherent of meditation. Last year, as Jackson began rebuilding the moribund New York Knicks as president, Mumford signed on for a third tour of duty. He won’t speak about the specific work he’s doing in New York, but it surely involves helping a new team adjust to Jackson’s sensibilities, his controversial triangle offense, and the particular stress that comes with compiling the worst record in the NBA. Late one April afternoon just as the NBA playoffs are beginning, Mumford is sitting at a table in O’Hara’s, a Newton pub. Sober for more than 30 years, he sips Perrier. It’s Marathon Monday, and as police begin allowing traffic back onto Commonwealth Avenue, early finishers surround us, un-showered and drinking beer. No one recognizes Mumford, but that’s hardly unusual. While most NBA fans are aware that Jackson is serious about meditation — his nickname is the Zen Master — few outside his locker rooms can name the consultant he employs. And Mumford hasn’t done much to change that. He has no office and does no marketing, and his recently launched website, mindfulathlete.org, is mired deep in search-engine results. Mumford has worked with teams that have won six championships, but, one friend jokes, he remains the world’s most famous completely unknown meditation teacher. That may soon change. This month, Mumford published his first book, The Mindful Athlete, which is part memoir and part instruction guide, and he has agreed to give a series of talks and book signings

I took his razor from the shower floor, bits of his black hair still caked between the blades. I took his toothbrush from the sink counter and sucked on the bristles, trying to find the taste of him, but there was only the flavor of watery mint toothpaste....I pulled the sheets off the bed with the idea that I could gather up the imprint of him and save it. I thought, I can unfurl the sheets on our old bed at home. I can lie in the creases formed by his body. I can sleep with him again.

We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we’re not that bad, maybe even that we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate then? It

English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it.

Sin pies ni cabeza.

And they spoke so fast!

Ya. ¡Basta, Celia!

Dios, qué vaina,

Con el pésame más profundo y las bendiciones de Dios por la pérdida de alguien tan querido

En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo. Am

Él es tan rabioso.

Dios sabe lo que hace.

Pátzcuaro and in the shops that catered to them, and we couldn’t read the signs above the storefronts as we passed them, so we peered in every window along the way to see what was inside.

...(I)t can be stated that the spread of the ideology connecting Africa and black people in general with the Jews has been spectacular. It arose in the European and Middle Eastern imagination in the early Middle Ages and may be attributed in part to the ignorance of much of the world brought about by the breakdown of communications between the Islamic Middle East and what lay beyond it and Christian Europe. It became an axiomatic feature of medieval thinking about the world. It was used, exploited, and reinvented by colonialism in many distinct places in Africa, where it served missionary and colonial interests. The construction of Jewish and Israelite racial and cultural identities was an innate feature of Western colonialism throughout the world. Jews were constructed everywhere--not only in Africa but in Great Britain. The invention or discovery of Israelites reinforced the idea of Europe by providing Europe with a limitless periphery of known and understood racial others. The re-racialization of the world using the Bible as a road map may be seen as an overreliance on the one ethnography, often the one book, that missionaries were familiar with but also as an attempt to "other" the unknown worlds of Africa and Asia with a known, trusted, and malleable "other" of Europe. This discourse is a potent and immanent aspect of the imagined past and the lived present of a surprising number of black Africans and African Americans, as well as millions of other people.

In the imperialistic discourse of Germany at that time, the slogan Volk ohne Raum (a people without land) came into popular use. This phrase expressed a sort of self-identity otherwise unknown among the imperial powers, one that provided a specifically German variety of motivation for the general, Europe-wide antipathy toward America. Behind the pathos of Karl May and other contemporary Germans concerning the boundlessness of the American land lurked a secret wish to possess a country so big. These desires were of course to remain unfulfilled (indeed, America seemed to be colonizing Germans, more than Germans America), adding particular bitterness to the fact that so many of their fellow Germans chose to go to America. For many Germans, this emigration was more than a simple loss. It was treason.

War is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Unknown

Surely those folks who play their lives and their work eminently safe don’t often put themselves in the position where they can be startled or enlarged. Don’t put themselves near enough to the realm of the unknown where discovery resides, and joy has been rumored to appear.

WHEN MY HUSBAND, Stan Cloud, and I were researching the early years of World War II for our first book, The Murrow Boys, we happened to see an old movie about the Battle of Britain, which included a scene about a squadron of Polish pilots. Until then, we had no idea that any but British pilots had flown in that epic fight, and we wanted to find out more. In doing so, we discovered that dozens of Poles not only had participated but actually had played a critical role in winning the battle. We decided that their story, unknown to most Americans, deserved telling. But as we dug deeper, we realized that the importance of the Polish contribution to the Allied victory went far beyond the pilots’ exploits. The Poles and their wartime experiences became the subject of A Question of Honors, the second book we wrote together.

No one here wants to admit it, but the United States is part of México’s problem. The United States is feeding the beast, man.

We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we’re not that bad, maybe even that we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate

judged by the Harvard Law Review in 1904 to be “probably the best modern text-book on the law of patents, and . . . the only treatment of the modern American law of patents.” Speaking before the same House Committee on Patents, Walker argued that protection of plants as intellectual property should be limited to those who actually create new plants, as opposed to those who merely discover a previously unknown organism.

I felt the way I often felt in this country—simultaneously conspicuous and invisible, like an oddity whom everyone noticed but chose to ignore.