Best Mexico History Books
Here you will get Best Mexico History Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth
Author: by Bryan Burrough
English
416 pages
1984880098
An astonishing story that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about immigration reform in the United States, now updated with a new Epilogue and Afterword, photos of Enrique and his family, an author interview, and morethe definitive edition of a classic of contemporary America Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, this page-turner about the power of family is a popular text in classrooms and a touchstone for communities across the country to engage in meaningful discussions about this essential American subject.
Enrique’s Journey recounts the unforgettable quest of a Honduran boy looking for his mother, eleven years after she is forced to leave her starving family to find work in the United States. Braving unimaginable peril, often clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains, Enrique travels through hostile worlds full of thugs, bandits, and corrupt cops.
But he pushes forward, relying on his wit, courage, hope, and the kindness of strangers. As Isabel Allende writes: This is a twenty-first-century Odyssey. If you are going to read only one nonfiction book this year, it has to be this one.
3. War on the Border: Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion
Author: by Jeff Guinn
English
368 pages
1982128860
A dramatic account of the Punitive Expedition of 1916 that brought Pancho Villa and Gen. John J. Pershing into conflict, and whose reverberations continue in the Southwestern US to this day. Jeff Guinn, chronicler of the Southwestern US and of American undesirables (Bonnie and Clyde, Charles Manson, Jim Jones) tells the riveting story of Pancho Villa’s bloody raid on a small US border town that sparked a violent conflict with the US.
The Punitive Expedition was launched in retaliation under Pershing’s command and brought together the Army, National Guard, and the Texas Rangerswho were little more than organized vigilantes with a profound dislike of Mexicans on both sides of the border. Opposing this motley military brigade was Villa, a guerrilla fighter who commanded an ever-changing force of conscripts in northern Mexico.
The American expedition was the last action by the legendary African-American Buffalo Soldiers. It was also the first time the Army used automobiles and trucks, which were of limited value in Mexico, a country with no paved roads or gas stations.
4. The Undocumented Americans
Author: by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
One World
English
208 pages
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation. Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard.
Selena Gomez LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VULTURE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Book Review Time NPR The New York Public Library Book Riot Library JournalWriter Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name.
It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she’d tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer’s phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrantsand to find the hidden key to her own.
5. The Official Overstreet Indian Arrowheads Identification and Price Guide (Official Overstreet Indian Arrowhead Identification and Price Guide)
Author: by Robert M Overstreet
Krause Publications
English
1120 pages
The Ultimate Guide to Indian Arrowheads! Long considered the Bible of arrowhead collecting, The Official Overstreet Indian Arrowheads Identification and Price Guide is an encyclopedic guide to projectile points found in the contiguous United States, as well as Alaska. Featuring more than 12,000 images of points from 10 distinct geographical regions, readers gain an understanding of arrowhead types, manufacturing, grading, materials and values.
A substantial and massive reference unmatched in the marketplace, The Official Overstreet Indian Arrowheads Identification and Price Guide is the most respected book on the subject. Hands-on reference to everything arrowheads all in one book: arrowhead types, manufacturing, grading materials, values 12,000 actual size photographs covering hundreds of point types Special sections on how to grade, identify and catalog your points Covers arrowheads found from throughout the United States including Alaska
6. The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
Author: by Vincent Bevins
English
352 pages
1541724003
The hidden story of the wanton slaughter – in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world – backed by the United States.In 1965, the U.S. Government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile.
But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA’s secret interventions were so successful. In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe.
For decades, it’s been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S. Led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington’s final triumph in the Cold War.
7. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya
Author: by Mary Ellen Miller
English
216 pages
0500279284
The myths and beliefs of the great pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica have baffled and fascinated outsiders ever since the Spanish Conquest. Yet, until now, no single-volume introduction has existed to act as a guide to this labyrinthine symbolic world. The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya is the first-ever English-language dictionary of Mesoamerican mythology and religion.
Nearly 300 entries, from accession to yoke, describe the main gods and symbols of the Olmecs, Zapotecs, Maya, Teotihuacanos, Mixtecs, Toltecs, and Aztecs. Topics range from jaguar and jester gods to reptile eye and rubber, from creation accounts and sacred places to ritual practices such as bloodletting, confession, dance, and pilgrimage.
In addition, two introductory essays provide succinct accounts of Mesoamerican history and religion, while a substantial bibliographical survey directs the reader to original sources and recent discussions. Dictionary entries are illustrated with photographs and specially commissioned line drawings. Mary Miller and Karl Taube draw on their research in the fast-changing field of Maya studies, and on the latest Mexican discoveries, to produce an authoritative work that will serve as a standard reference for students, scholars, and travelers.
8. Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
Author: by Camilla Townsend
Oxford University Press
English
336 pages
In November 1519, Hernando Corts walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story-and the story of what happened afterwards-has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards.
After all,we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native Americans were intrigued by the Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the newcomers, they used it to write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl.
Until recently, these sources remained obscure, only partiallytranslated, and rarely consulted by scholars. For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves.
Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloodyfigures of European stereotypes. The conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic moment, nor an origin story launching Mexicans into existence.
9
The Codex Borgia: A Full-Color Restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript (Dover Fine Art, History of Art)
Author: by Gisele Díaz
Dover Publications
English
112 pages
Considered by many scholars the finest extant Mexican codex and one of the most important original sources for the study of pre-Columbian religion, the Codex Borgia is a work of profound beauty, filled with strange and evocative images related to calendrical, cosmological, ritual, and divinatory matters.
Generally similar to such Mixtec manuscripts as the Codex Nuttall, the Codex Borgia is thought to have its origin (ca.A.D. 1400) in the southern central highlands of Mexico, perhaps in Puebla or Oaxaca. It is most probably a religious document that once belonged to a temple or sacred shrine.
One use of the Codex many have been to divine the future, for it includes ritual 260 day calendars, material on aspects of the planet Venus, and a sort of numerological prognostic of the lives of wedded couples. Another section concerns various regions of the world and the supernatural characters and attributes of those regions.
Also described are the characteristics of a number of deities, while still other passages relate to installation ceremonies of rulers in pre-Columbian kingdoms. Until the publication of this Dover edition, the Codex Borgia has been largely inaccessible to the general public.
10. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Author: by Nathaniel Philbrick
B000OZ0NWQ
Penguin Books
May 1, 2001
From the author of the forthcoming book, Valiant Ambition, the riveting and critically acclaimed bestseller, soon to be a major motion picture starring Chris Hemsworth, directed by Ron Howard, premiering on December 11, 2015Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson will star in a new film based on this National Book Awardwinning account of the true events behind Moby Dick.
In 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale, leaving the desperate crew to drift for more than ninety days in three tiny boats. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents and vivid details about the Nantucket whaling tradition to reveal the chilling facts of this infamous maritime disaster.
In the Heart of the Seaand now, its epic adaptation for the screenwill forever place the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon. From the Trade Paperback edition.
11. Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
Author: by Aviva Chomsky
English
304 pages
0807056480
Restores the region’s fraught history of repression and resistance to popular consciousness and connects the United States’ interventions and influence to the influx of refugees seeking asylum today. At the center of the current immigration debate are migrants from Central America fleeing poverty, corruption, and violence in search of refuge in the United States.
In Central America’s Forgotten History, Aviva Chomsky answers the urgent question How did we get here? Centering the centuries-long intertwined histories of US expansion and Indigenous and Central American struggles against inequality and oppression, Chomsky highlights the pernicious cycle of colonial and neocolonial development policies that promote cultures of violence and forgetting without any accountability or restorative reparations.
Focusing on the valiant struggles for social and economic justice in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, Chomsky restores these vivid and gripping events to popular consciousness. Tracing the roots of displacement and migration in Central America to the Spanish conquest and bringing us to the present day, she concludes that the more immediate roots of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras lie in the wars and in the US interventions of the 1980s and the peace accords of the 1990s that set the stage for neoliberalism in Central America.
12. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico
Author: by Miguel Leon-Portilla
080705500X
Beacon Press
English
For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel Len-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples.
In this new and updated edition of his classic The Broken Spears, Len-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the extraordinary vitality of an oral tradition that preserves the viewpoints of the vanquished instead of the victors.
Len-Portilla’s new Postscript reflects upon the critical importance of these unexpected historical accounts.
13. True Tales from Another Mexico
Author: by Sam Quinones
English
336 pages
0826322964
Chalino Sanchez was a migrant worker who became a underground singer of narcocorridos – ballads about drug smugglers – until his murder, which remains unsolved. Then he became a legend. Two traveling salesmen plied their wares in a sweltering small town.
The next day they were hanging from the town’s bandstand lynched by a mob, a thousand strong. Hailed as a cult classic, True Tales From Another Mexico takes us to a colony of drag queens – jotos – preparing for Mexico’s oldest gay beauty contest.
We see how a bunch of humble rancheros invented the Michoacana popsicle, and a business model that poor people used to grow rich. We follow a Oaxacan Indian basketball team in Los Angeles as its coach fights to restore the purity of his sport, besmirched in America.
Aristeo Prado was a gunfighter and robber – a valiente trying to escape his past – when he was ambushed on a noontime street and died going for his gun. Telenovelas, once a propaganda vehicle of Mexico’s one-party state, flourished with political change and touched topics – corruption, drug trafficking and poverty – that once were prohibited.
14. Mezcal: The History, Craft & Cocktails of the World’s Ultimate Artisanal Spirit
Author: by Emma Janzen
Voyageur Press
English
240 pages
NOMINATED FOR THE 2018 JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION AWARD IN BEVERAGES! Emma Janzen is your guide to the bartender’s best kept secret, the spirit everyone has been missing out on and it’s called Mezcal. See what sets this cousin of tequila apart from the rest of the pack.
Produced in Mexico for centuries but little known elsewhere until recent years, mezcal has captured the imagination of spirits enthusiasts with its astonishing complexities. And while big liquor is beginning to jump aboard the bandwagon, most mezcal is still artisanal in nature, produced using small-batch techniques handed down for generations, often with agave plants harvested in the wild.
Join author Emma Janzen through Mezcal as she presents an engaging primer on all things related to the spirit; its long history, the craft of distilling it, and a thorough guide to many of the most common agaves used in production and how they shape the resulting spirit.
In addition, top mezcal bars across the United States and Mexico contribute a selection of nearly fifty cocktails that accentuate its distinguishing qualities. Beautifully produced and authoritatively written, Mezcal is the definitive guide to exploring and unraveling the mysteries of this extraordinary handcrafted spirit.
15. South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
Author: by Alice L Baumgartner
English
384 pages
1541617789
A brilliant and surprising account of the coming of the American Civil War, showing the crucial role of slaves who escaped to Mexico. The Underground Railroad to the North promised salvation to many American slaves before the Civil War. But thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico, where slavery was abolished in 1837.
In South to Freedom, historianAlice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. Southerners hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop runaways and secure slavery’s future.
Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo Mxico upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is a revelatory and essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War.
16. El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency
Author: by Ioan Grillo
Bloomsbury Press
English
336 pages
A gripping, sobering account of how Mexican drug gangs have transformed into a criminal insurgency that threatens the nation’s democracy and reaches across to the United States.”Essential reading.”-Steve Coll, NewYorker. ComThe world has watched, stunned, the bloodshed in Mexico.
Forty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high.
Or is it part of a worldwide shadow economy that threatens Mexico’s democracy? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters, DEA assistance, and lots of money at the problem. But in secret, Washington is at a loss. Who are these mysterious figures who threaten Mexico’s democracy?What is El Narco?
El Narco is not a gang; it is a movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands, from bullet-riddled barrios to marijuana-covered mountains. The conflict spawned by El Narco has given rise to paramilitary death squads battling from Guatemala to the Texas border (and sometimes beyond).
