Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution: Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century, co-authored by History Department Chair Jurgen Buchenau (with Gilbert M. Joseph) has been featured in the History Book Club, a rare distinction for an academic book, especially on a topic not pertaining to either American or European history.
From the History Book Club: “The History Book Club is the most comprehensive and knowledgeable source for history books. The Club offers a wide range of topics including European & American history, Civil War, World War I and II, Ancient history and more. In addition to providing a diverse selection of thought-provoking titles, the History Book Club proudly offers expert book reviews by a team of leading academic historians.”
Duke University Press published the book. In this concise historical analysis of the Mexican Revolution, Joseph and Buchenau explore the revolution’s causes, dynamics, consequences, and legacies. They do so from varied perspectives, including those of campesinos and workers; politicians, artists, intellectuals, and students; women and men; the well-heeled, the dispossessed, and the multitude in the middle. In the process, they engage major questions about the revolution. How did the revolutionary process and its aftermath modernize the nation’s economy and political system and transform the lives of ordinary Mexicans? Rather than conceiving the revolution as either the culminating popular struggle of Mexico’s history or the triumph of a new (not so revolutionary) state over the people, Joseph and Buchenau examine the textured process through which state and society shaped each other. The result is a lively history of Mexico’s “long twentieth century,” from Porfirio Díaz’s modernizing dictatorship to the neoliberalism of the present day.
Buchenau is Professor of History and Latin American Studies at UNC Charlotte. He is the author of numerous books, including The Last Caudillo: Alvaro Obregón and the Mexican Revolution, Mexican Mosaic: A Brief History of Mexico, and Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution. His research interests include 19th and 20th century Mexico: cultural, economic, political, Political Culture, Immigration, Mexico in world affairs, Foreign travel writing, and Mexican Revolution.
Joseph’s books include A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War (with Greg Grandin), The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics (with Timothy J. Henderson), Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940 (with Anne Rubenstein and Eric Zolov), and Revolution from Without: Yucatán, Mexico, and the United States, 1880–1924, all also published by Duke University Press.
