The Oxford History of Mexico

I got this book because I had so many questions about our history with Mexico, a country whose relationship with us is in the news daily. Each chapter of the book is written by a specialist in the history of that period. I couldn't figure out where the Mexican revolution came in, and found they had more than one! We took half their country in the Mexican war, and played a heavy hand in extracting their agricultural and mineral wealth. I thought I knew about the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards (a couple of paragraphs from history classes). But the story of the conquest was fascinating for me. In the Spain of Columbus' time, the country was divided into small, self-governing towns--a pattern they brought with them. And rather than swooping down and conquering the inhabitants, the Spaniards used competing factions of native people to achieve their conquests--with continuing reinforcements from the Caribbean islands. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the struggle of the Mexican people, our neighbors.

What a dreary disappointment. This is NOT the way history should be written. I completely agree with other reviewers who found this book disjointed, poorly organized, and frankly not very written in many places. T Of course, I blame the editors for imposing no apparent vision for what this book should or might have been.There is not one map or figure. In the separately written chapters--mostly quite dull--here are only a few well told stories. Of course, many readers will know that there are plenty of wonderful stories that COULD have been told. (However, I'll concede that the story of the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortez is pretty well told; but in fact this story is unbelievably gripping, and one wonders why the author of this chapter took such special pains to dull everything down with endless trivial details.) The story of Pancho Villa is also fairly well told, but it could have been so much better! Other chapters are simply dreadful, including the chapter on Mexican independence covering 1800 - 1820. The author meanders all over the place; on one page I counted 10 different dates, no three of which were in chronological sequence .Furthermore, even as an academic exercise this book is a failure. Where are the footnotes? How do we know where the information came from for those few facts and stories that are tellingly presented? Why no annotations associated with the bibliography? What a half-hearted slapdash waste of paper.Let me say that I've read quite a few other Oxford Histories (including most of the books in the Oxford American History series -- which are largely sensational). This book, however, is not up to that standard. I think it has no place on anyone's shelf, except perhaps for close relatives of the authors and perhaps a few history subspecialists.My advice - don't bother.

Important issues of Mexican history are left out. Different authors contribute, but don't seem to coordinate well, so sometimes a subject is repeated throughout chapters.I recently moved to Mexico, and bought this book to learn about their history. I have forced myself to read it through the end. Now I can move on to better readings. This has been like sitting through a very long history lecture... delivered by someone who does not engage the audience, with long boring slides full of text that they just stand there and read... you get the picture!

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.

I am an academic but not an historian. Before a recent trip to Mexico, I wanted to read up on and refresh my memory from a decades old History of Mexico course. This was exactly what I needed. I would definitely recommend this to anyone teaching or studying in the area of Latin American history or politics.

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.

This is a great book I recommend you buy this and if you are taking history it helps you out by referencing to it.

A very engaging and thought-provoking book, it delves into the complex history of Mexico. The several sections and essays can stand alone, but together build a historical perspective that explains the nature of Mexican society. From the vast cultural and political underpinnings of Pre Colombian societies to the immensely complicated Mexican Revolution of 1910, with a plethora of heroes, villains and alliances, and to current challenges, which are all consequences of that history, this book does not disappoint.

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.