Table of Contents:Foreword, Tatcho MindiolaIntroduction, Arnoldo De LeónBeyond Borders: Causes and Consequences of the Mexican Revolution, Paul HartThe Mexican Revolution’s Impact on Tejano Communities: The Historiographic Record, Arnoldo De León La Rinchada: Revolution, Revenge, and the Rangers, 1910–1920, Richard RibbThe Mexican Revolution, Revolución de Texas, and Matanza de 1915, Trinidad Gonzales The El Paso Race Riot of 1916, Miguel A. Levario The Mexican Revolution and the Women of El México de Afuera, the Pan American Round Table, and the Cruz Azul Mexicana, Juanita Luna LawhnWomen’s Labor and Activism in the Greater Mexican Borderlands, 1910–1930, Sonia Hernández Salt of the Earth: The Immigrant Experience of Gerónimo Treviño, Roberto R. Treviño Sleuthing Immigrant Origins: Felix Tijerina and His Mexican Revolution Roots, Thomas H. Kreneck “The Population Is Overwhelmingly Mexican; Most of It Is in Sympathy with the Revolution . . . .”: Mexico’s Revolution of 1910 and the Tejano Community in the Big Bend, John Eusebio KlingemannSmuggling in Dangerous Times: Revolution and Communities in the Tejano Borderlands, George T. DíazEureka! The Mexican Revolution in African American Context, 1910–1920, Gerald Horne and Margaret StevensUnderstanding Greater Revolutionary Mexico: The Case for a Transnational Border History, Raúl A. RamosSelected BibliographyAbout the ContributorsIndex

Winner, William P. Clements Prize, Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America, 2004 Not quite the United States and not quite Mexico, La Junta de los Rios straddles the border between Texas and Chihuahua, occupying the basin formed by the conjunction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the Chihuahuan Desert, ranking in age and dignity with the Anasazi pueblos of New Mexico. In the first comprehensive history of the region, Jefferson Morgenthaler traces the history of La Junta de los Rios from the formation of the Mexico-Texas border in the mid-19th century to the 1997 ambush shooting of teenage goatherd Esquiel Hernandez by U.S. Marines performing drug interdiction in El Polvo, Texas. "Though it is scores of miles from a major highway, I found natives, soldiers, rebels, bandidos, heroes, scoundrels, drug lords, scalp hunters, medal winners, and mystics," writes Morgenthaler. "I found love, tragedy, struggle, and stories that have never been told." In telling the turbulent history of this remote valley oasis, he examines the consequences of a national border running through a community older than the invisible line that divides it.

Alongside Moctezuma and Benito Juárez, Pancho Villa is probably the best-known figure in Mexican history. Villa legends pervade not only Mexico but the United States and beyond, existing not only in the popular mind and tradition but in ballads and movies. There are legends of Villa the Robin Hood, Villa the womanizer, and Villa as the only foreigner who has attacked the mainland of the United States since the War of 1812 and gotten away with it. Whether exaggerated or true to life, these legends have resulted in Pancho Villa the leader obscuring his revolutionary movement, and the myth in turn obscuring the leader. Based on decades of research in the archives of seven countries, this definitive study of Villa aims to separate myth from history. So much attention has focused on Villa himself that the characteristics of his movement, which is unique in Latin American history and in some ways unique among twentieth-century revolutions, have been forgotten or neglected. Villa’s División del Norte was probably the largest revolutionary army that Latin America ever produced. Moreover, this was one of the few revolutionary movements with which a U.S. administration attempted, not only to come to terms, but even to forge an alliance. In contrast to Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro, Villa came from the lower classes of society, had little education, and organized no political party. The first part of the book deals with Villa’s early life as an outlaw and his emergence as a secondary leader of the Mexican Revolution, and also discusses the special conditions that transformed the state of Chihuahua into a leading center of revolution. In the second part, beginning in 1913, Villa emerges as a national leader. The author analyzes the nature of his revolutionary movement and the impact of Villismo as an ideology and as a social movement. The third part of the book deals with the years 1915 to 1920: Villa’s guerrilla warfare, his attack on Columbus, New Mexico, and his subsequent decline. The last part describes Villa’s surrender, his brief life as a hacendado, his assassination and its aftermath, and the evolution of the Villa legend. The book concludes with an assessment of Villa’s personality and the character and impact of his movement.

Volume 2 of The Mexican Revolution begins with the army counter-revolution of 1913, which ended Francisco Madero's liberal experiment and installed Victoriano Huerta's military rule. After the overthrow of the brutal Huerta, Venustiano Carranza came to the forefront, but his provisional government was opposed by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, who come powefully to life in Alan Knight's book. Knight offers a fresh interpretation of the great schism of 1914-15, which divided the revolution in its moment of victory, and which led to the final bout of civil war between the forces of Villa and Carranza. By the end of this brilliant study of a popular uprising that deteriorated into political self-seeking and vengeance, nearly all the leading players have been assassinated. In the closing pages, Alan Knight ponders the essential question: what had the revolution changed? His two-volume history, at once dramatic and scrupulously documented, goes against the grain of traditional assessments of the "last great revolution."