The City of Mexico in the Age of Díaz

Rating:
Summary: Turn of the century in Mexico City
Review: I define a great book as one that changes and clarifies the way that I view the world. This one changed the way I viewed part of the world, and that's good enough for me to highly recommend it. I scarcely knew the history of the country on our southern border, and Diaz was simply a name with no context. This book is an eloquent geographical study of Mexico City during the turn of the 19th-20th century. Johns unravels cause and effect, patterns and trends, politics and society in what would seem to a visitor to be mere chaos. This academic book not only lays out the context and causes of the Revolucion, but provides some lessons in politics and power that play out even today. The only drawback is that the book brings us to the edge of the Mexican Revolution and then the book ends, like the first movie in a trilogy, teasing the reader for a sequel. But then I suppose the book would have lost its focus, so I am satisfied that is a self-contained and tight (and well-referenced) exploration of an intriguing place and time.

Rating:
Summary: Turn of the century in Mexico City
Review: I define a great book as one that changes and clarifies the way that I view the world. This one changed the way I viewed part of the world, and that's good enough for me to highly recommend it. I scarcely knew the history of the country on our southern border, and Diaz was simply a name with no context. This book is an eloquent geographical study of Mexico City during the turn of the 19th-20th century. Johns unravels cause and effect, patterns and trends, politics and society in what would seem to a visitor to be mere chaos. This academic book not only lays out the context and causes of the Revolucion, but provides some lessons in politics and power that play out even today. The only drawback is that the book brings us to the edge of the Mexican Revolution and then the book ends, like the first movie in a trilogy, teasing the reader for a sequel. But then I suppose the book would have lost its focus, so I am satisfied that is a self-contained and tight (and well-referenced) exploration of an intriguing place and time.