Villa and Zapata - Softcover

McLynn, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786710888 ISBN 13: 9780786710881

Publisher: Basic Books, 2002

Synopsis

A stirring, authoritative account of the Mexican Revolution, told through the lives of its infamous rebel-outlaws: Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata
Villa and Zapata vividly chronicles the decade of bloody events that followed the eruption of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and made legends of the rebels Francisco "Pancho" Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Mexico's was the first massive social revolution of the twentieth century, visiting economic, cultural, and racial strife on a country already exploited by oppressive officials and crippled by poverty, but also offering hope to its people. The ruthless Villa and his army of ex-cowboys in the north and Zapata, recruiting his infantry from the sugar plantations of the south, successfully waged a devastating war on two fronts and brought down a string of autocrats in Mexico City. But the two men failed to make common cause and ultimately fell victim to intrigues more treacherous than their own.

About this title

About the Author

Frank McLynn is the author of numerous works of history and biography, including Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Wagons West. A graduate of Oxford and the University of London, he lives in England.

From Publishers Weekly

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 and lasted for over a decade, a bloody and confusing saga of betrayal, corruption, misshapen politics and mislaid trusts that, in the end, accomplished little for lower- and lower-middle class Mexicans. Historian and biographer McLynn (Carl Gustav Jung; etc.) reconstructs the revolution through the biographies of its two most important figures, Francisco (Pancho) Villa, the bandit-turned-revolutionary, and Emiliano Zapata, whose declaration, "It's better to die on our feet than to live on our knees," later became La Pasionaria's Spanish Civil War slogan. Comprehensive almost to a fault, McLynn also devotes many pages to other key players: the revolution's first leader, Francisco Madero, who, having defeated President Porfirio D¡az, stopped short of killing the president and members of the fallen government; and the ambitious Pascual Orozco, a controversial revolutionary figure believed by some (his pal Villa later among them) to have been on D¡az's payroll. Having moved briskly and clearly through the disorganization and obfuscation of one of the bloodiest (and longest) revolutions in history, the author makes this informative, insightful study even more compelling with his witty and fluid prose. In his exhaustive research, McLynn plumbed "the ranks of the apocrypha," compared conservative histories to liberal ones and accounted for trends (economic, cultural, agricultural, industrial) concurrent with and pertinent to the revolution. McLynn grasps so completely and communicates so deftly the nuances of government corruption, the U.S. stance toward a long succession of Mexican autocrats, infighting between Zapatistas and Villistas, that this book feels less like a history than a great story, as exciting as a Saturday serial Western. Three maps, 16 pages b&w photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0786710888
• ISBN 13: 9780786710881
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 492