Young Luis Beltran strained under the load of the heavy bundle of marijuana strapped to his back as he ducked under the border fence at Naco, Mexico. He planned to head north, across the Arizona desert to deliver the contraband package and collect five thousand dollars as promised him. Luis had seen others earn streams of cash from the flood of drug trade cash flowing through his village. He intended to collect for this one delivery, and escape the poverty of the borderland with his mother and older sister. The journey Luis begins with his first step into Arizona propels him into unknown territory and unexpected future.

The concept of North American borderlands in the cultural imagination fluctuated greatly during the Progressive Era as it was affected by similarly changing concepts of identity and geopolitical issues influenced by the Mexican Revolution and the First World War. Such shifts became especially evident in films set along the Mexican and Canadian borders as filmmakers explored how these changes simultaneously represented and influenced views of society at large. Borderland Films examines the intersection of North American borderlands and culture as portrayed through early twentieth-century cinema. Drawing on hundreds of films, Dominique Brégent-Heald investigates the significance of national borders; the ever-changing concepts of race, gender, and enforced boundaries; the racialized ideas of criminality that painted the borderlands as unsafe and in need of control; and the wars that showed how international conflict significantly influenced the United States’ relations with its immediate neighbors. Borderland Films provides a fresh perspective on American cinematic, cultural, and political history and on how cinema contributed to the establishment of societal narratives in the early twentieth century.

The more than 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border is a focus of intense interest today, as immigration, security, and environmental issues dominate the headlines. This is the first A-to-Z encyclopedia to overview the unique and vibrant elements that make up the borderlands. More than 150 essay entries provide students and general readers with a solid sense of the U.S.-Mexico border history, culture, and politics. Coverage runs the gamut from key historical and contemporary figures, art, cuisine, sports, and religion to education, environment, legislation, radio, rhetoric, slavery, tourism, and women in Ciudad Juarez. The more than 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border is a focus of intense interest today, as immigration, security, and environmental issues dominate the headlines. This is the first A-to-Z encyclopedia to overview the unique and vibrant elements that make up the borderlands. More than 150 essay entries provide students and general readers with a solid sense of the U.S.-Mexico border history, culture, and politics. Coverage runs the gamut from key historical and contemporary figures, art, cuisine, sports, and religion to education, environment, legislation, radio, rhetoric, slavery, tourism, and women in Ciudad Juarez. Alphabetical and topical lists of entries in the frontmatter allow readers to find topics of interest quickly, as does the index. Those looking for more in-depth coverage will find many helpful suggestions in the Further Reading section per entry as well as in the Selected Bibliography. A chronology and historical photos also complement the text.

Challenging the standard view that England emerged as a dominant power and Wales faded into obscurity after Edward I's conquest in 1282, this book considers how Welsh (and British) history became an enduringly potent instrument of political power in the late Middle Ages. Brought into the broader stream of political consciousness by major baronial families from the March (the borderlands between England and Wales), this inventive history generated a new brand of literature interested in succession, land rights, and the origins of imperial power, as imagined by Geoffrey of Monmouth. These marcher families leveraged their ancestral, political, and ideological ties to Wales in order to strengthen their political power, both regionally and nationally, through the patronage of historical and genealogical texts that reimagined the Welsh past on their terms. In doing so, they brought ideas of Welsh history to a wider audience than previously recognized and came to have a profound effect on late medieval thought about empire, monarchy, and succession.

Explore a universe run amok with savage beasts, bloodthirsty bandits, and the biggest bad of all—corporations, in this full-color hardcover encyclopedia of Gearbox’s beloved videogame franchise! The universe of Borderlands is an inhospitable wilderness that spans every biome conceivable. It’s also a land full of opportunity, but only if you have wits, skill, and guns. Lots of guns. Many come to Pandora in search of the Vault in the hopes of finding wealth, fame, or power. This is the definitive guide to the bold people who live there and in the surrounding galaxy, the mercenaries, monsters, and wilds they contend with, and the ridiculous arsenal they employ. Dark Horse Books and Gearbox present The Worlds of Borderlands­—a bombastic guide to Pandora, its surrounding planets and the characters who live there. This volume is filled with art and trivia relating to the guns, vehicles, ships, companies, and adventurers of the worlds-spanning universe—and the monstrous fauna who would eat all of them.

The past two decades have seen an intense, interdisciplinary interest in the border areas between states—inhabited territories located on the margins of a power center or between power centers. This timely and highly original collection of essays edited by noted scholar I. William Zartman is an attempt “to begin to understand both these areas and the interactions that occur within and across them”—that is, to understand how borders affect the groups living along them and the nature of the land and people abutting on and divided by boundaries. These essays highlight three defining features of border areas: borderlanders constitute an experiential and culturally identifiable unit; borderlands are characterized by constant movement (in time, space, and activity); and in their mobility, borderlands always prepare for the next move at the same time that they respond to the last one. The ten case studies presented range over four millennia and provide windows for observing the dynamics of life in borderlands. They also have policy relevance, especially in creating an awareness of borderlands as dynamic social spheres and of the need to anticipate the changes that given policies will engender—changes that will in turn require their own solutions. Contrary to what one would expect in this age of globalization, says Zartman, borderlands maintain their own dynamics and identities and indeed spread beyond the fringes of the border and reach deep into the hinterland itself.