The Devil's Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea
This is the story of a group of men who have become known as the Yuma 14. They are the fourteen illegal immigrants who died attempting to cross the Arizona border in May, 2001. And what a terrible and upsetting story it is. Unknown numbers of these illegal immigrants die every year making the dangerous crossing on foot over one of the most inhospitable stretches of terrain in the world. But the Yuma 14 constituted the largest known number of such immigrants to die at one time.
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Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico by Hugh Thomas
This must surely be one of the great adventure stories of all time – how Hernan Cortés and about 500 conquistadores conquered a settled and established civilization in three short years, from 1519 to 1521. Distinguished scholar and historian Hugh Thomas has made good use of recently discovered archival material in both Spain and Mexico to produce a feast of reading for history buffs. Cortés must have been an incredible leader – as well as being a total bastard.
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Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy by Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon
Here is the history of Mexico in the last two or three decades - and what a history it is. It's the story of how a dictatorship eventually found its way toward becoming a democracy. As stories go, this one has everything - political corruption, student demonstrations leading to a massacre, earthquakes, citizen crusades, an Olympics and, as they say, much, much more. It looks as though it might even have a happy ending.
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South of Yesterday: A True Story by Virginia Downs Miller
"South of Yesterday" is the story of my mother's life as a bride coming to a strange land. The book flows through the charmed life of an American living in Guadalajara in the early nineteen hundreds, into the violence of the Revolution, escape from and return to a much-beloved Mexico. I related never before publicized events of history."
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Wild Steps of Heaven by Victor Villase
The setting of the story is around 1910, the time of the Mexican Revolution and the war is an ever-present background to the story. It's a time when great cruelties were imposed on the Indian populace by the country's rulers. Indeed, genocide is the only word you could use to describe what happened. The villain of the piece is a colonel of the Rurales who makes it his personal mission to see that every Indian dies in the most hideous fashion possible. As villains go, this one is a real bastard.
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Zapata by John Steinbeck
In 1952, John Steinbeck won an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay of the movie, Viva Zapata! Many years later, however, a manuscript was found in UCLA Library in which it was discovered he had...
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Border Crossings by David L. Fleming
The book is ased on an actual incident in relations between the U.S. and Mexico when, in 1916, Pancho Villa's bandidos, led by Antonio Salazar, raided the small town of Columbus, New Mexico. The border between the two countries in those times was a more tense and seemingly less well-defined place at the beginning of the century. Certainly there was less coming-and-going between the two countries then.
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The Annexation of Mexico: From the Aztecs to the Imf, One Reporter's Journey through History by John Ross
Ross, a social activist, poet and working reporter based in Mexico City, has a lively and irreverent style. It makes his book an enjoyable read, despite the sometimes heavy material. His thesis is that outsiders, and most especially the United States, have never stopped trying to control or annex "this enormously rich, indescribably poor nation" in one way or another for centuries. Usually this was accomplished through plain old land-grabbing. Today the process continues through economic instruments such as indebtedness, NAFTA and the war on drugs.
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The Underdogs (Los de Abajo): A Novel of the Mexican Revolution by Mariano Azuela
This novel is described in several places as a classic of modern Hispanic literature and it really is a powerful book. Novelist Mariano Azuela knew what he was writing about, having served as a doctor in Pancho Villa's army and having participated in several key engagements in that conflict.
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Aztec by Gary Jennings
I found this novel to be a total winner. In fact, it just kept on getting better and better and I can’t recommend it highly enough. A couple of people described it as "that gory book" when I mentioned I was reading it. Yes, it’s gory, because it describes a society that was rather big on human sacrifice and a people who were rather beastly to neighboring tribes. But they had worthy things going for them, too. They built a wonderful city and produced great artists and created a viable civilization. My hat is off to Gary Jennings.
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San Miguel and the War of Independence by Mamie Spiegel
Ms. Spiegel's account mainly covers what she calls the viceregal period, also known as the colonial era, which lasted from 1521 to 1821. Mexico at that time was the richest and most populous of Spain's overseas dominions. It was at the end of this period, in 1810, that the War of Independence erupted with San Miguel and the nearby town of Dolores being the focal points of that outbreak. The war was to last eleven years.
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The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes
The story is based on the mysterious death/disappearance of the American writer Ambrose Bierce who, at age 71, went into Mexico in 1913 during the Revolution and vanished. Bierce is the author of such works as "The Devil's Dictionary" and "Incident at Owl's Creek Bridge." He was a contemporary of writers like Bret Harte and Mark Twain. He was also a newspaper reporter, employed at the time of his death by the San Francisco Chronicle, which was part of the William Randolph Hearst empire. Bierce had also seen distinguished service in the Civil War.
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A History of Mexico by Henry Bamford Parkes
A very straightforward, unbiased, factual account of Mexican history from the times of the Indians, the Mayas and Toltecs and Aztecs up to the 1960s.
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Aztec Autumn by Gary Jennings
Readers of these reviews may remember that I was a big fan of Jenning’s previous work, Aztec. I gave it my highest accolade – five stars. And here comes the sequel, which is almost as good. The action in this one takes place 12 years after all the goings on in Aztec and concerns the adventures of 18 year old Tenamixtli, the son of Mixtli, the hero of the former novel. Indeed, in the first chapter, Tenamixtli witnesses an execution, a burning at the stake publicly carried out by Spanish troops. Later, he discovers that the executed man was his father. How’s that for getting a story started? As you can imagine, revenge plays a big part in the plot.
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Yesterday's Train: A Rail Odyssey through Mexican History by Terry Pindell with Lourdes Ramirez Mallis
Author Pindell and Dr. Lourdes Ramírez Mallis, who served as Pindell's interpreter, collaborator and researcher, set out together on a lengthy train journey covering all of Mexico. I should also add that Terry Pindell has written similar books about train journeys in Canada and the U.S. As they travel, we're treated to dissertations on the various locales as well as a fairly serious coverage of Mexican history and the character of the people.
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Mexico by James Michener
The good thing about "Mexico" is that Michener has done enormous research in order to write it.
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