Review

Textbooks, Readers, and References

Mexico already has several good surveys that are far superior to this textbook in almost every aspect although all have failed to grasp the extent of the momentous changes in Mexico of the last twenty years. The market leader is the seemingly ever ready and ever current--now in its sixth edition--Oxford University Press entry, The Course of Mexican History (1999) by Michael Meyer, the late William Sherman, and Susan Deeds. Concise, at 732 pages, it is not. And it has a certain ponderous drone that puts students to sleep, but it is reliable and comprehensive, and many professors, who cannot cover everything in one semester, prefer it as a failsafe backup. For those dividing their history of Mexico course into two semesters, the colonial and national periods, many favor Colin MacLachlan and Jaime Rodríguez's The Forging of the Cosmic Race (1990) for the first, and MacLachlan and William Beezley's El Gran Pueblo (1999) for the second. Both reach a high level of scholarly synthesis and readability. If less is more, then Brian Hamnett's A Concise History of Mexico (1999) in the Cambridge Concise Histories series is a superb choice at 336 pages. And Oxford has just answered the Cambridge challenge with The Oxford History of Mexico (2000) edited by the above Meyer and Beezley. The most popular, although somewhat dated now, is Alan Riding's Distant Neighbors (1985); as a perceptive general introduction to Mexico, nothing seduces students and lay people more. Riding was the New York Times bureau chief in Mexico, and the others are longtime Mexicanists with many scholarly publications. These are the standards against which new textbooks on Mexico have to be judged.	1
Unfortunately, Burton Kirkwood's The History of Mexico falls short by almost any measure. His synthesis of the pre-Columbian era is flawed by antiquated descriptions of the "political rule [of the Classic Period] as having rested on a theocracy" (p. 20) and the Post-Classic Period as being distinguished by the "emergence of militaristic societies" (p. 15). These conceptual categories, articulated by Eric Wolf in his Sons of the Shaking Earth (1974), have largely been discarded now. They are not consistent with the archaeological evidence unearthed in recent years showing that militarism was rampant during both periods and priestly control was not necessarily the dominant force in any period. While Kirkwood's analysis of recent Mexican history comes closer to acceptable standards, it too is marred by misstatements. He blames the growing Americanization of Mexican life on "the imposition of American culture through food, television, movies, music, clothing, sports, and even language" (p. 9). While one may decry the choices Mexican's have made, they were not imposed. Young Mexicans have freely chosen to join the "X-generation." The author calls "this process...cultural imperialism" (p. 9). While a radical critique is undoubtedly in order, because few Latin Americanists want to see Mexico inundated with hamburgers or "tropi-burgers" of any kind, to call the phenomenon imperialism without an extended argument or analysis falls short. Straining to shore up Mexican self-worth, Kirkwood writes that "Mexico has contributed to sports in the United States, with football--or soccer, as it is known in the United States--becoming the fastest growing team sport" (p. 10). How Mexico has contributed is never stated. Readers have to fill in the blanks, and even after one makes the argument for the author, one questions whether Mexico was responsible for the growth of U.S. soccer. Kirkwood's bibliographic essay is a minimalist overview. Nevertheless, the works suggested for further reading--all in English except for Daniel Cosío Villegas' team effort on the Porfiriato--are good selections. However, to list Louisa Hoberman's brilliant Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590-1660 (1991) as a work to be "examined" for "the controversial issue of race in colonial Mexico" (p. 230) is bizarre. .	2
Loyola University New Orleans Maurice P. Brungardt

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