In this revealing cultural study, dozens of ancient weavers and the landscapes that they occupy in the Cusco region of the Andes are vividly portrayed through personal stories and life experiences, bringing to life the decades of endurance, skill, fortitude, and natural pride honed from the time-honored traditions of the region and its people. Some of the storytellers featured here include Pitumarca's Timoteo Ccarita, who became so interested in the old textiles he found on his own travels that he re-created tapestry techniques from sight; Leonardo Quispe, who single-handedly rescued and revived the techniques of ikat-style tied-warp dyeing (watay) in his community of Santa Cruz de Sallac; and Cipriana Mamani, who remembers that in her town of Accha Alta, their finely woven textiles had many lives and were repurposed for use over and over again. Intimate photographs capture each of the elders, some of whom had never seen a picture of themselves or even looked in a mirror, revealing the life, strength, character, and experience of these men and women.

For at least 20,000 years, masking has been a mark of cultural evolution and an indication of magical-religious sophistication in society. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the mask as a powerful cultural phenomenon--a means by which human groupings attempted to communicate their dignity and sense of purpose, as well as establish a continuum between the natural and supernatural worlds. It addresses the distinctive environments within which masks flourished, and analyzes the mask as a manifestation of art, ethnology and anthropology.

The current quandary that the Roman Catholic Church finds itself in right now is what Brother Louis DeThomasis calls "a crisis of confidence" in this insightful, provocative, and hopeful new book. He points to the way of unraveling the quandary by returning the church's historic belief in tradition- "the lived experience of the faithful" - as a source of ongoing revelation and renewal. This is not an attack by someone intent on bringing down the church but rather a wake-up call for the church itself to recognize and embrace globalization, diversity, and democratization and begin to rebuild what DeThomasis calls "koinonia" or "communio". He uses the issue of the ordination of women as a case study of how the institutional church has fallen out of step with its own members but could work its way back to relevance and effectiveness by listening to them. Brother Louis makes it clear that he is not just criticizing others: "I know that I am guilty as anyone of many of the sins decried in this book. I too have been insensitive, closed-minded, arrogant, self-centered, too-quick-to-defend-the-indefensible, and overly protective of myself and my fellow church-members. For this I am sorry. And for this reason I offer my book as a small token of atonement." But he does insist that the institutional church has to change quickly and fundamentally if it is to recover its creditability and authority. People like him who have dedicated their entire lives to the church have to speak up, he says: "I am a 70-year-old De LaSalle Brother, entering my well-developed understandings about the church that I feel I have not only a right but a duty to present to whomever might want to listen."