THE MEXICANS

The author, a naturalized Mexican, editor, socialist and now historian, writes this history of his adopted nation immersed in its nationality, yet at a pace removed. What he has written is a work of both beauty and grandness. Taking us from the Aztec's founding of Tenochtitlan, their prophetic city, to the modernizing Mexico of today, one encounters the histories, rather than the history of the many Mexicos that make up Mexico. The story of the three centuries of colonial rule is splendidly told, and the catastrophic years of Mexico's turbulent independence, as well as the 1910-17 revolutionary period, are made comprehensible--no easy task. Here and there the mixed benefits of the author's theories emerge, but that shouldn't obtrude upon the reader. Again, the author on a number of occasions straightens out some annoying historical kinks (do we really know for sure that it was the Spaniards who killed Montezuma?) but such doings may raise eyebrows of Mexicanists. The book will yield all that the average person needs to know about this arresting nation to the south, with students being particular beneficiaries.