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Title: Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution by Frank McLynn ISBN: 0-7867-1088-8 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Well Written with a serious fault.
Comment: "Villa and Zapata" is a good read and moves quickly along from start to finish. However, I don't know if the reader can actually believe anything in it. It contains no footnotes!
This is a spurious practice in a history book. A Google search for "Frank McLynn" and "footnote" shows that many of his books contain no footnotes, according to their reviewers. Therefore he can make any statement he wants in the interests of a good narrative without too much worry about anyone checking it. Kind of post-modern, this desire to get away from facts and into the narrative.
The lack of footnotes, combined with his prodigous output on a variety of historical subjects, makes his output suspect, in my view. McLynn's bio on the back cover says he is Visiting Professor in the Department of Literature at Strathclyde University. For a lit guy, he seems to write nothing but history and biography.
McLynn lists his favorite books about Mexico in the Guardian and they're all fiction. OK, but where are the great history books, such as Friedrich Katz' definitive "Life and Times of Pancho Villa"?
I would suggest the latter for the serious student of Mexican revolutionary history. It is just as interesting and has footnotes.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Thin Veneer and Ravening Maw
Comment: 'Villa and Zapata' deserves reading twice, the book is so rich in detail and the Mexican Revolution was so fascinating and timeless. But it's likely only dedicated students and historians will give the book much attention.
Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa were the most prominent and remembered among the constellations of men at war and movements in Mexico from 1910 to 1920, but the book's attention to so many facets of that decade of Mexican history - and how these melded into Woodrow Wilson's America and the First World War in Europe -- was its most remarkable feature to me.
Permit me as a compliment to 'Villa and Zapata' to paraphrase at some length from two of its parts describing the deaths of those two prominent and remembered but very different warriors, and then briefly from the book's Conclusion.
First died Emiliano Zapata -
'On April 10, 1919, Zapata and his escorts rode down the hills towards a hacienda - in familiar territory, as he had taken it in early 1911. There were shops outside the hacienda, and Zapata stopped and conferred there with his escorts. Jesus Guajardo, who was to accept Zapata's surrender at the hacienda, came outside and joined Zapata and his escorts. Only one zapatista had entered the hacienda - Zapata's principal aid Miguel Palacios was discussing the handover of 12,000 rounds of ammunition. Outside Guajardo suggested to Zapata that they ride inside the hacienda walls for dinner. Zapata was wary but tired and hungry, and so he acceded, taking a bodyguard of just ten men. He mounted his horse and rode into the hacienda's plaza, as Guajardo's guard of honor stood at attention - paying their visitor a great compliment. A bugle sounded and the guard presented arms. The last note sounded and Zapata had reached the threshold of the building when the guards opened fire at point-blank range. Zapata died immediately, and Palacios and two of the escort also perished. The rest of the zapatistas fled for their lives.'
Pancho Villa lasted four long years more -
'On July 20, 1923, Villa drove to Canutillo in a large Dodge saloon with six men. In the town, at the intersection of Benito Juarez and Claro Hurtado streets, there was an old man selling candy and he cried out Viva Villa! It was a prearranged signal, and as Villa turned the corner he ran into a fusillade of bullets. He was killed instantly. The Dodge went out of control and hit a tree. One of Villa's companions managed to crawl under the car and play dead while a gunman ran up and pumped more bullets into Villa's head. Another companion managed to kill one of the assailants before making good his escape. Claro Hurtado was less fortunate. Trying to get away down a river bank, his way was blocked and he was gunned down when he turned back.'
The book's Conclusion begins -
'The Mexican Revolution was a ten-year Iliad, in which Villa, Zapata, Obregon and Carranza played the roles in fact which were played in myth by Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector, and Aeneas. Historians estimate that the death toll was between 350,000 and 1,000,000, excluding the victims of the 1918 flu epidemic, which added another 300,000 to the list of fatalities. Civilization's thin veneer was never thinner than in the Mexican Revolution, and the moral is surely that even in advanced societies we skate all the time on the thinnest of ice. And a seemingly trivial political crisis can open up the ravening maw of an underworld of chaos.'
Rating: 4
Summary: Great biographical history
Comment: Starting a big book about a subject as complex as the Mexican Revolution can be a chore, but McLynn turns a complex, socio-economic crisis into the tale of two arrogant men. For that reason, his book is priceless. Although reading a biography about Villa and Zapata can realistically just skim the surface of the Revolution, the verve with which thje author tackles his subjects, and the respect he clearly felt for them make his book an enjoyable read. Romanticism does cloud his judgement - although he presents Villa's banditry alongside his derring do - but that makes the book better. He escapes the rigorous pedantry which hangs like a millstone over so much history, but remains accurate.
This book is a great start for anyone approaching the Mexican Revolution, and a fascinating comparative biography of two flawed and contradictory characters.
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Title: Zapata and the Mexican Revolution by John Womack Jr. ISBN: 0394708539 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 August, 1970 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Life and Times of Pancho Villa by Friedrich Katz ISBN: 0804730466 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: The Wind that Swept Mexico by Anita Brenner, George R. Leighton ISBN: 0292790244 Publisher: Univ of Texas Press Pub. Date: 1984 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Zapata by John Steinbeck, Robert E. Morsberger ISBN: 0140173226 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1993 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940 (Dialogos Series, 12) by Michael J. Gonzales ISBN: 082632780X Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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