The Oxford History Of Mexico By William H. Beezley And Michael C. Meyer

Oh, dear. This is a compilation of ridiculous left-wing squawks, which really doesn’t reflect well on its publisher. The disastrous Mexican Civil War, which ended up with the same authoritarian regime in power for eight consecutive decades, is referred to as the “Revolution” (because, in lefty-speak, a revolution is always an unalloyed blessing). Ramon Mercader doesn’t get a mention for killing Leon Trotsky in Mexico. All right: Mercader was Spanish and Trotsky was Russian, but the ability of the paranoid Stalinist state to hunt down an enemy about six thousand miles away does say rather a lot about the state of Mexican politics and the Mexican justice system. Trotsky gets a few references, but the fact that he was murdered in Mexico isn’t important enough to mention, apparently. Why not? If his assassination in Mexico is too insignificant to mention, what was so important about his presence there in the first place?

Another occasion when Mexico impinged on the world’s consciousness occurred during the First World War, when Alfred Zimmermann made his bizarre attempt to embroil the United States in a continental war, so that it couldn’t become involved in the fighting in Europe. Famously, the “Zimmermann telegram” achieved the exact opposite of its intent, precipitating American intervention in Europe. Don’t bother searching the Kindle book for “Zimmermann”, because Friedrich E. Schuler, author of the relevant chapter, doesn’t know how to spell Zimmermann’s name, or even what his political role was. He also darkly refers to “the so-called Zimmerman [sic] telegram”, as if there is something dubious about its provenance. There’s plenty that is doubtful about Schuler’s own expertise. He asserts that the telegram was “intercepted by British and U.S. intelligence forces”: a far from reliable version of events. Beyond the fact he just cannot help himself, an affliction which seems to affect most contributors to this volume, I don’t begin to know why he makes such an inaccurate claim.

This is a truly abysmal book.

I have been living in Mexico for some time now. I have always been very interested in the pre-colonial history of Mexico. I bought this book to learn more in general about Mexican history, and I wanted a book that was in English and reliable. This book satisfies. It is not particularly gripping though, and I still haven’t finished reading it. I keep it around more as a reference, though I occasionally pull it out and read a bit more.

I found this book extremely hard to follow even with a basic understanding of the history of Mexico. I agree with what the other reviewers have said in that this book lacks a narrative flow and seems disjointed at points because it is organized, though in roughly chronological order, by specific themes. Right up till talking about the colonial era, it dedicates three chapters specifically on the indiginous, women and religion across a period of several hundred years. the book also goes into very high detail about everything, which makes it hard to piece together a general picture if you don’t have a good hold on the general story already or if you don’t plan on reading it more than once. In conclusion, it may be a good book for what it is and for its targeted audience, but I don’t recommend to start reading this book if you are in need of a general outline of the course of events. It is probably useful for reference or going into depth on certain (or all) aspects of history and to complement one’s understanding.

So far I’m really enjoying the book. It is clearly written and covers some really great information that helps define the history of Mexico well for someone like me who has little knowledge of the overall subject. I’ve already learned a great deal. I also like that each section of the chapters are written by different experts on the topics and in so doing, more than one approach to the subject is presented. As a casual reader, not a student or researcher, it is interesting, clear, concise and thorough. I’ve read histories that present ideologies and terms without explaining them and leaving the reader confused as to who is who and who did what and why. I haven’t come across this yet. I am so pleased.