Cogan’s Reviews Cynicism isn’t my favorite literary mode. It wears thin after a while. And John Ross is nothing if not cynical. For the first two chapters I wondered if I was going to make it all the way. However, the saving factor in his book, “The Annexation of Mexico” is that most of the […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews This is a novel about a couple of Americans who choose to leave San Francisco and live in a small, remote Mexican village. They are Richard and Sara Everton. Their purpose is to reopen a copper mine that was abandoned by Richard’s grandfather fifty years ago in the Revolution of 1910. The novel, […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews What a wonderful book this is for explaining some of the mysteries of Mexico. It’s not pretty stuff but one emerges with great admiration for the Mexican people and their ability to survive in a plainly rotten social and economic system. Ms. Hellman, who is a Professor of Political and Social Science at […]
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Cogan’s Reviews I started to read this book several years ago, before coming to Mexico, and didn’t get very far into it. It’s a formidable 1,038 pages in length and, at the time, I just didn’t feel I could go the distance. Also, the world that Jennings was describing was a bit too alien and […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews It is with some trepidation that I set out to write a review of this famous novel about a Mexican priest on the run from the authorities who are out to kill him and all other Roman Catholic priests they find. The story is based on a true happening in history in Mexico […]
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Cogan’s Reviews I have to admit there were moments during my reading of the first hundred or so pages of this book when I wondered if I would finish it. Rereading the notes I made along the way I see that at one point I wrote the question: Who are the intended readers of this […]
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Cogan’s Reviews This, like its predecessor, All The Pretty Horses, is another coming-of-age story involving a young American in the border country between Mexico and New Mexico in the 1930s. Billy Parham is sixteen years old when he traps a wolf in New Mexico and decides to take the injured animal back across the border […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Here’s a book of travel essays from a man who obviously admires this country. He’s covered Mexico from coast to coast and from north to south in a criss cross journey that’s well described here. Thus we get informed accounts of places like Cuernavaca, Puerto Vallarta, Oaxaca, Mazatlan and so on, along with […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Here’s a volume that’s aimed very accurately at a specific target audience – namely, people who want more information about retiring in Mexico. Author Dru Pearson has done an excellent job of researching and compiling almost everything anyone needs to know about adopting this country as a place to spend one’s leisure years, […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Where on earth do you start with William Reed? It’s as if he’s done everything in his first 75 years. His career beginning makes him seen quite unlikely for what was to follow. For example, he closed that first chapter on November 30, 1967, when he quietly retired from the U.S. Navy after […]
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