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The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography
Contributor(s): Pawel, Miriam (Author)
ISBN: 1608197131     ISBN-13: 9781608197132
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
OUR PRICE:   $21.60  
Product Type: Paperback
Published: March 2015
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Political
- Political Science | Labor & Industrial Relations
- Biography & Autobiography | Social Activists
Dewey: B
Physical Information: 1.7" H x 6.1" W x 9.2" (1.50 lbs) 560 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
California Book Award Winner

The Crusades of Cesar Chavez is a biography for readers who find real human beings more compelling than icons. --Los Angeles Times

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union, launched a movement, and inspired a generation. He rose from migrant worker to icon, becoming one of the great leaders of the twentieth century. Two decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history. Yet his life story has been told only in hagiography--until now.

In the first comprehensive biography of Chavez, Miriam Pawel offers a searching yet empathetic portrayal. Chavez emerges here as a visionary whose eyes were fixed on a horizon others often could not even see. He was a brilliant strategist who sometimes stumbled, and a streetwise organizer whose pragmatism was often at odds with his soaring dreams. Drawing on thousands of documents, hundreds of hours of audiotape, and scores of interviews, this superbly written life deepens our understanding of one of Chavez's most salient qualities: his profound humanity.

Pawel traces Chavez's rise as he empowered the poor and disenfranchised and led farmworkers to historic victories over the agriculture industry. With compassion and compelling detail, she narrates the equally dramatic later years when Chavez's charismatic leadership devolved into a cult of personality, with heartbreaking consequences for his union. The Crusades of Cesar Chavez reveals how this unlikely American hero ignited one of the great social movements of our time--and left a legacy that resonates today, from California to the White House.


Contributor Bio(s): Pawel, Miriam: - Miriam Pawel is an award-winning reporter and editor who spent twenty-five years working for Newsday and the Los Angeles Times. She was recently an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow and a John Jacobs Fellow at the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.