Kelly Lytle Hernandez

There is an exciting, interesting story here—a group of passionate idealists fomenting a revolution, darting back and forth across political borders, narrowly escaping capture, inspiring the kind of change that often doesn’t come even once in a lifetime. The facts and details of that story are here. Sadly, they are absolutely drowning in all manner of minutiae and nonessential detail. This is the dry, tedious narrative of what should be a really captivating story. I wanted to like it, show more wanted to at least find it interesting. But in the end I was just happy to be done with it.

Also, for what it’s worth, the audiobook narrator was terrible. One of those that has you wishing for an abridged version. She matched the tone perfectly, I’ll say that: Breathless Monotony. show less

This book is full of information and manages to pull together the timeline of the magonistas into a readable (if a bit dry) format. This book helped fill in some gaps in my existing knowledge of Mexican and southwest US history.

There is a nice map at the front, though I did not need to refer to it much.

My biggest complain is the vagueness of some of her terminology. Where, exactly, is "south Texas"? Is this south of San Antonio, specifically? Is El Paso west Texas and not south Texas? I also show more became somewhat confused in her terminology of referring to some groups by race and others by nationality, when she really means political/philosophical groups, and of referring to native Mexicans (the Yaqui most often) but not native Americans in the PLM's plans and recruitments (they were recruiting Japanese immigrants but not, say, the Tohono O'odham in Arizona?--why? and was this related to their demands in Mexico?).

I absolutely learned a lot from this book, if you are interesting Mexican, American, or borderlands history; political history; rebellions; even the media in rebellions--this book is worth a read. show less

She's really good at creating a propulsive narrative out of myriad facts. This book had a lot of information but it read really quickly.

Bad Mexicans is a very powerful book discussing the relationship between Mexico and the US, historically and economically, which leads up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. This book provides a very good background of the Mexican Revolution - best I've read so far! Book was well researched and well thought-out. Thoroughly enjoyed. Highly recommend!