Tierra y Libertad land and liberty was an anarchist political slogan used by revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata and others during the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. The revolutionary goal, among others, was to reclaim and disburse vast agricultural lands held by the government and economic elites and to provide the landless with a new freedom from exploitation by landowners. Land represented liberty. Tierra y Libertad the book provides a sweeping history of US Latinos’ struggle for adequate housing and the American Dream. Author Steven Bender is a law professor at the University of Oregon. The fifteen chapters comprising Tierra y Libertad are divided into four major sections: (1) Loss; (2) Exclusion; (3) Geographic Examples of Loss and Exclusion; and (4) Reclamation and Reform. The first chapters describe the long and sordid history of Latino loss of huge agricultural land-holdings in the American Southwest how Latinos went from being an affluent and land-rich population to being a landless and migratory people. This social and legal history uncovers the predatory role of the US government, unscrupulous lawyers and powerful economic interests, and the dislocations caused by the Great Depression. The continuing loss of land and housing is then brought up to date with the economic devastation caused by the current financial crisis, predatory lending practices and foreclosures, and government housing policies that have favoured America’s middle class over poor minorities, including Latinos. The discussion is brought to life with many personal accounts of housing loss and the financial ruin it has wreaked upon Latinos and their families. The chapters on exclusion focus on how Latinos are often systematically and legally excluded from the nation’s housing market. Here, Tierra y Libertad tells a story of a pernicious and widespread pattern of Latino residential segregation seeded by exclusionary zoning practices, such as density zoning or restrictive covenants. Local and state governments routinely collude with private economic interests. Bender demonstrates that litigation-based remedies often are ‘no panacea’; persistent segregation means that Latinos today are often excluded from essential government services, such as water and sewer or even paved roads (in the colonias). Today, exclusion is also widely practised against unauthorized Latino immigrants. Local anti-immigrant ordinances often legally deny housing to Latinos without proof of citizenship or legal entry into the United States. Bender illustrates his claims with evidence from Hazelton, Pennsylvania (i.e. Lou Dobbs’ favourite case), and other immigrant communities that have received national media attention. Although most of the social history presented in Tierra y Libertad centres on Mexicoorigin Latinos in the Southwest and Los Angeles, the book also gives historical and contemporary examples of housing loss and exclusion in other Latino communities. For example, Bender discusses the expatriation and loss of property of Cuban Americans during the Castro revolution in 1959 and later in 1980 with the Mariel boat lift. He also describes the threat of urban renewal (and Latino displacement) in East Harlem for islandborn Puerto Ricans who have made Manhattan’s upper-east side (i.e., Spanish Harlem) their home. Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 34 No. 8 August 2011 pp. 1408 1419