Zach Henak’s Book review

The U.S.-Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century: A History of Economic and Social Transformation. David E. Lorey, Scholarly Resources inc.

David E. Lorey’s book The U.S.-Mexican Boarder In The Twentieth Century is an excellent text supplement to a course on the border. It has a plethora of knowledge on the border, and its history. However it isn’t by any means a book for someone to pick up and explore the border through. It has a list of supplementary books that are great for picking up and reading about the border. However, this book itself has far to much depth and requires a depth of knowledge before you can read and understand it without reading three supplementary books in order to understand each of the single chapters of Lorey’s book.

The Book was actually written because Lorey complained to the general manager of Scholarly Resources that no basic text on the border existed. So the general manager asked Lorey if he would compile his notes into one text for exactly that purpose. To create a text for Mexican American border classes that is accurate and is more of a compilation of many authors, historians and geographers.

The book does a wonderful job of portraying the history and reality of all the states on the border, and how the border isn’t really U.S. or South American. It is the eye of the storm that no one really knows about outside of those eleven states. From a map it looks just like there is nothing special. Lorey describes the area as, “Two different nations face each other and overlap”. The book has a great map that helps those that aren’t familiar with the border. This is necessary because Lorey refers to towns and states without context to where they are located.

The biggest downfall to the book is that it is choppy. He does some jumping around. At one point he will be talking about Chihuahua and the history of how they were affected by the depletion of world war two, then the next sentence he will jump to the Sonora desert and back again. He covers a lot in one hundred and seventy nine pages, but it is definitely more of a textbook style than anything else.

Since I did say that the Book covers a breadth of knowledge and not only history. I feel it is also necessary to say that the book covers the economic progression of both sides and how they work together. Over all Lorey did a nice job of compiling the information. Just don’t expect it to be an easily comprehendible reading and the book will be very satisfying.