The Border: Life on the Line

Hall, Douglas Kent

ISBN 10: 0896596850 / ISBN 13: 9780896596856

Published by Abbeville Press Publishers, New York, 1988

About this Item

249 Pages with pink cloth covered boards with lettering blind stamped on the front and gold lettering and a graphic on the spine. Blue endpapers. Interior text pages are bright, tight, and white with no noted defects. This book is an examination of the US Mexico border region. The author presents it as a hybrid of two nations, neither one nor the other, but a separate place. It is an arbitrary political barrier and an emotional scar in addition to being a landscape of both grandeur and squalor. Heavily illustrated with black and white and color photographs throughout. Dramatic photographs capture the people and places along the Mexican-American border, those living in wealth and poverty, in hope and in despair, and the Mexicans who attempt to cross the border and the patrol out to stop them.

Seller Inventory # 20587

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Border: Life on the Line
• Publisher: Abbeville Press Publishers, New York
• Publication Date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0896596850
• ISBN 13: 9780896596856
• Binding: Hard Back
• Illustrator: Khatami, Renee - Designer
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Dramatic photographs capture the people and places along the Mexican-American border, those living in wealth and poverty, in hope and in despair, and the Mexicans who attempt to cross the border and the patrol out to stop them

Reviews

The Mexican-American border region is many things: a no-man's-land for illegal emigres; a home to poor, hardworking villagers; a vast patchwork of ranches and farms; a zone of economic conquest as the U.S. economy pushes south. Seldom-explored facets of this twilight world are spotlighted in Hall's leisurely photoessay. A writer-photographer whose previous books include Shot in Prison and Working Cowboys, Hall lets the border inhabitantsteachers, ranchers, poets, prostitutesspeak for themselves. An American priest discusses his work with Central American political refugees. A Border Patrol agent complains that his heavy paperwork load prevents him from nabbing more illegals. Members of a Mexican-American family explain their belief in spirits. The photographs and rambling narrative succeed in capturing the dignity and inner strength of the Mexicans who eke out a living in this "corridor between the richest nation on earth and one of the poorest."
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This photographer's insightful personal view of the U.S.-Mexican border culture is a cross between Alan Weisman and Jay Dusard's La Frontera ( LJ 2/1/87) and Lester D. Langley's MexAmerica ( LJ 7/88). Hall's work covers the usual border subjects, but also accurately captures the complexity of the frontier through more unusual personalities such as a priest, a teacher, and an artist. The work is rife with numerous black-and-white and color photographs, many quite striking, but the layout is often crowded. More judicious use of pictures, combined with a a better focused narrative, would have enhanced this work. Recommended for public libraries without the above books. Roderic A. Camp, Central Coll., Pella, Ia.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.