Alisse Waterston is Presidential Scholar and Professor, Department of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and author or editor of seven books including the graphic novel, Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning (illustrated by Charlotte Corden). A Long-Term Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (SCAS) in the Programmes in Transnational Processes, Structural Violence, and Inequality (2020-present), she served as President of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in 2015-17. She is editor of the book series, Intimate Ethnography for Berghahn Books. Professor Waterston is author of two ethnographies on urban poverty in the US (Love, Sorrow and Rage: Destitute Women in a Manhattan Residence and Street Addicts in the Political Economy), and of the edited volumes, An Anthropology of War: Views from the Frontline and Anthropology off the Shelf: Anthropologists on Writing (co-edited with Maria D. Vesperi).

Prologue 1. The Shtetl Jedwabne - Sunrise, Sunset 2. Aftermaths - Delicate Memories 3. The Voyage Out - Routes 4. The Shopkeepers - Return 5. Young Man in Havana - The Power of Privilege 6. An American Soldier - The Lost Ones 7. In Love and War - Postwar 8. American Dreams/Dreaming in Cuban - Habitus 9. Dictators - The End of Empires 10. Cigarettes, Babies, and Change - Possession and Dispossession 11. Things Fall Apart - The Sacred and the Secular 12. Te Amamos Siempre, Paisano - The Story of My Story Epilogue Afterword: Out of the Shadows and Into the Present