A page-turning political manifesto that fueled the Latino civil rights movement in America, Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "brilliant... a valuable contribution to the understanding of our time..." and became the literary benchmark in ethnic studies programs at colleges and universities in the country.
Written by American historian and best-selling author Tony Castro, who taught the first class in Latino Politics at the JFK Institute of Politics at Harvard University where he lectured as a Nieman Fellow. Chicano Power was re-issued in a special 40th anniversary commemoration edition in 2014.
When Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America was published by E. P. Dutton in 1974, America was still sobering up from the intoxicating headiness of the social and cultural upheaval of the 1960s, and the national psyche was on the mend fromthe political violence and corruption that had shattered and humbled the country. What lay ahead in those next few decades was an educational, political, and legal mine field that moved racial-ethnic relations into conflicts over affirmative action, quotas, minority preferences, and a cultural cold war about equality and meritocracy that rages on today.