Mexico and the United States: a Story of Revolution, Intervention and War

This is not a distant history written from safety. Frederick Starr, an American anthropologist who had spent years walking through Mexican villages and studying its people, wrote this book as revolution burned across the nation. He watched the Centennial of Independence in 1910 become the kindling for a violent, decade-long upheaval that would reshape Mexico entirely. What makes this book remarkable is Starr's refusal to tell the story from only one side. He traces the long arc from Aztec civilization through Spanish conquest, independence, and the porfiriato, showing how centuries of inequality and foreign meddling created the conditions for explosive change. By 1914, as he wrote, the country was in civil war, Zapata, Villa, Madero, Huerta all contending for Mexico's future. Starr understood that this was not merely a Mexican story but an American concern, given the shared border and deep entanglement. His closing argument remains striking: these nations are different, yet neighbors, and they should be friends. The book endures because it captures an American's sincere attempt to understand a revolution from the inside, before the outcome was known.