An important investigation of Mexico's recent political, economic and social past—and its possibilities for the future.
An insightful firsthand examination of Mexico from 2000 to the present.
Based in Mexico City, foreign correspondent Tuckman looks at the political and economic arenas of Mexico since the overturn in 2000 of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), its long-term ruling party. When the National Action Party (PAN), led by Vicente Fox, took power, many Mexicans viewed this as a breath of fresh air, bringing change and hope to the country. However, Tuckman reveals that the ensuing 12 years have not lived up to that optimism, with the wheels of democracy slow to move in a country riddled with corporate greed, political corruption and escalating drug wars. The author's concentrated inspection gives readers a close look at the lawlessness of the numerous powerful drug cartels instilling fear in locals, migrating workers and even mainstream media with daily kidnappings and murders of those who stand in their way. Tuckman delves into racial discrimination, global warming and environmental concerns regarding Mexico's large oil fields, as well as the rise in floods and clean-water issues in Mexico City. She also examines the revolutionary actions of the Zapatistas in Chiapas and a flare-up in Oaxaca in 2006 that bears comparison to the uprisings seen recently in the Middle East. Not all is lost, however, as recent presidents have attempted to "regreen" deforested areas, tourism continues to rise, and Mexican food products are found around the world thanks to trade agreements. With the upcoming presidential election, Mexicans are once again hoping for a political leader who can “kick-start the levels of growth required to transform the country from a bastion of poverty and inequality into a burgeoning middle-class nation.”
An important investigation of Mexico's recent political, economic and social past—and its possibilities for the future.Pub Date: June 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-300-16031-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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