In the American imagination, no figure is more central to national identity and the nation’s origin story than the cowboy. Yet the Americans and Europeans who settled the U.S. West learned virtually everything they knew about ranching from the indigenous and Mexican horsemen who already inhabited the region. The charro—a skilled, elite, and landowning horseman—was an especially powerful symbol of Mexican masculinity and nationalism. After the 1930s, Mexican Americans in cities across the U.S. West embraced the figure as a way to challenge their segregation, exploitation, and marginalization from core narratives of American identity. In this definitive history, Laura R. Barraclough shows how Mexican Americans have used the charro in the service of civil rights, cultural citizenship, and place-making. Focusing on a range of U.S. cities, Charros traces the evolution of the “original cowboy” through mixed triumphs and hostile backlashes, revealing him to be a crucial agent in the production of U.S., Mexican, and border cultures, as well as a guiding force for Mexican American identity and social movements.

Over 450 entries provide information on cowboy history, culture, and myth of both North and South America.

A RoadfoodTM Cookbook The colorful history of El Charro Café and the 150 recipes for vibrant, exciting Mexican food make this book as unique and entertaining as the 80-year-old restaurant itself. It is rumored that in the 1940s, founder Monica Flin would sit on the El Charro patio, sipping martinis from teacups and playing cards with John Wayne, who was in Tucson to film westerns. Today the restaurant is run by Carlotta Flores and her husband, Ray. The El Charro Café, America's oldest family-operated Mexican restaurant, is located in a house built in the 1890s by Monica's father (who was also Carlotta's great-grandfather). The restaurant's signature dish is Carne Seca Beef, a Tucson passion. The beef is cured high above the restaurant's patio where strips of thin-sliced tenderloin hang in an open metal cage. Old favorites and creative new Mexican dishes that are enjoyable to cook and to serve fill the book. The greatest restaurants in America are its wonderful independent regional restaurants. And there are no greater experts on America's regional restaurants than Michael and Jane Stern. "Coast to coast," said the New York Times, "they know where to find the freshest lobster rolls, the fluffiest pancakes, the crispiest catfish." Rutledge Hill Press is launching a new series of RoadfoodTM Cookbooks, each with recipes, pictures, and the history of one of America's greatest regional restaurants.

In the American imagination, no figure is more central to national identity and the nation’s origin story than the cowboy. Yet the Americans and Europeans who settled the U.S. West learned virtually everything they knew about ranching from the indigenous and Mexican horsemen who already inhabited the region. The charro—a skilled, elite, and landowning horseman—was an especially powerful symbol of Mexican masculinity and nationalism. After the 1930s, Mexican Americans in cities across the U.S. West embraced the figure as a way to challenge their segregation, exploitation, and marginalization from core narratives of American identity. In this definitive history, Laura R. Barraclough shows how Mexican Americans have used the charro in the service of civil rights, cultural citizenship, and place-making. Focusing on a range of U.S. cities, Charros traces the evolution of the “original cowboy” through mixed triumphs and hostile backlashes, revealing him to be a crucial agent in the production of U.S., Mexican, and border cultures, as well as a guiding force for Mexican American identity and social movements.

In this first major English-language interpretation of charrería, Kathleen Mullen Sands describes the evolution of this equestrian tradition, highlighting the role of horsemen and women throughout Mexico's history. For those who believe cowboy culture and rodeo represent historic horsemanship in the United States, Charrería Mexicana reveals a festival of equal complexity and distinction.

Going far beyond basic historical information, this two-volume work examines the deep roots of Mexican culture and their meaning to modern Mexico. In this book, readers will find rich, in-depth treatments by renowned as well as up-and-coming scholars on the most iconic people, places, social movements, and cultural manifestations—including food, dress, film, and music—that have given shape and meaning to modern Mexico and its people. Presenting authoritative information written by scholars in a format that is easily accessible to general audiences, this book serves as a useful and thorough reference tool for all readers. This work combines extensive historical treatment accompanied by illuminating and fresh analysis that will appeal to readers of all levels, from those just exploring the concept of "Mexico" to those already familiar with Mexico and Latin America. Each entry functions as a portal into Mexican history, culture, and politics, while also showing how cultural phenomena have transformed over the years and continue to resonate into today.

"A brief and majestic debut." —Matías Néspolo, El Mundo Tochtli lives in a palace. He loves hats, samurai, guillotines, and dictionaries, and what he wants more than anything right now is a new pet for his private zoo: a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia. But Tochtli is a child whose father is a drug baron on the verge of taking over a powerful cartel, and Tochtli is growing up in a luxury hideout that he shares with hit men, prostitutes, dealers, servants, and the odd corrupt politician or two. Long-listed for The Guardian First Book Award, Down the Rabbit Hole, a masterful and darkly comic first novel, is the chronicle of a delirious journey to grant a child's wish.