MEXICO: The Struggle for Peace and Bread

Into this illuminating study of the meaning of Mexico’s recent history Frank Tannenbaum has put the distillation of more than three decades of the familiarity with that country. Having traveled Mexico from the Rio Grande to the Guatemalan border, from the Gulf to the Pacific, and having been friendly with peasants, city folk, politicians, philosophers, artists and presidents, he understands Mexico as few foreigners can understand it. This is not one more travel book, but a serious, well-founded survey of what, humanly speaking, Mexico is—in terms of sociology, politics, economics, and psychology. It tells how Mexico came to be that way, and ponders on what it is likely to become. This book begins with a rapid survey of significant events from Hernan Cortés to Porfirio Díaz; continues with a searching analysis of the foreign and domestic policies of the present Mexican regime. In a final chapter it demonstrates the enormous importance to general United States foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson’s and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s conduct of Mexican-American relations. Here is a book to put on the shelf of enduring books about our fascinating southern neighbors, along with the classic works of Bernal Díaz, Mme Calderón de la Barca, Charles M. Flandrau, Ernest Gruening, Eyler Simpson, Henry Bamford Parkes, and Miguel Covarrubias.