Cultured Travel Guide Books - Insurgent Mexico |
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 972
EAN: 9780717800995
ISBN: 0717800997
Label: International Publishers
Manufacturer: International Publishers
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 292
Publication Date: 1988-12
Publisher: International Publishers
Studio: International Publishers |
| Spotlight Customer Reviews: |
Customer Rating:  
Summary: If only there was more
Comment: this book lives up to its underground billing as we are drawn into the Mexican Revolution in a way that makes us seem to be riding with Pancho Villa and living with the villagers along the way. It reminds one of a Hemingway report except with added detail. The only complaint is that it is not longer for it leaves you the urge to read more Reed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Comment: In this account of his adventures in the advance to Mexico City with Pancho Villa's armies, John Reed gives an excellent account of what it was like to have been there. Luckily enough for him, historians, and adventure lovers alike, he was on the winning side and survived to tell his tale. His tale is his aspect of the venture among the soldiers who fought the battles, rode the trains, suffred the hardships of civil war, and tasted the glow of victories won on the way to the capitol city. It's gritty, putrid, rough and tumble and the food isn't great but at the end you get a heck of a kick from surviving it all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: John Reed's writing style is great
Comment: This book was written over 80 years ago, so as military journalism it is quite dated. However, the author's portraits of people and places are so vivid that the characters and events seem to come alive. The author displays a novelist's talent for description. It is a very sympathetic portrait of Pancho Villa. I don't know how historically accurate it is, but it is certainly interesting reading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Classic Work on its Era
Comment: This book has been notorious since its publication in 1914. The author was a vagabond leftist reporter for the American radical press, and did not go to Mexico City riding in relative comfort on the press train accompanying the Division del Norte of General Francisco "Pancho" Villa during his successful Constitutionalist southward campaign against the Federalista forces of the usurper General Victoriano Huerta; he who had murdered president Madero and his vice president, and seized power in Mexico City in conjunction the forces of Zapata.
Instead, Reed, in accord with his common man leanings, while on campaign, lived among the "grunts", Mexican campesinos who made up the bulk of Villa's forces.
There are incisive pen portraits of the Constitutionalist leaders, descriptions of the wretched living conditions of the people, observations on the siege of Torréon, N.L.. and nearby Gomez Palacio, neighboring key strategic cities on the railroad south from Juarez to Mexico City.
This is not history or reporting but a collection of impressionistic and justifiably biased essays. Still very valuable for the feel of the times and has been translated into many languages. The author later went to Russia and wrote "Ten Days That Shook the World." (c.f.) about the October Revolution.
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| Editorial Reviews: |
American journalist John 'Jack' Reed writes, on the scene, describing the Mexican Revolution of 1914. He gives an excellent and realistic account of the Mexican Indians and peons that have suffered under a brutal dictatorship. He writes about the time he spent in Northern Mexico with Pancho Villa and the war in the desert. It was hard for him as a Gringo as most Americans had only gone to Mexico to pluner the enviornment. Read "The White Rose' by Bruno Traven and his other 'jungle' series books about the exploitation of Indian Mexican's. Many would say that Jack Reed took over from Jack London in his war reporting, since Jack had just died in 1914. Jack Reed's other famous book "Ten Days That Shook The World" is about the Red October (Boleshvik) Russian Revolution - the movie "Reds" by Warren Beaty is Jack Reed's story. A Collector's Edition.
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