Midnight In Mexico

Named one of the best true crime books of all time by Time In the last six years, more than eighty thousand people have been killed in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. A paramilitary group spun off from the Gulf cartel, the Zetas, controls key drug routes in the north of the country. In 2007, Corchado received a tip that he could be their next target—and he had twenty four hours to find out if the threat was true. Rather than leave his country, Corchado went out into the Mexican countryside to trace investigate the threat. As he frantically contacted his sources, Corchado suspected the threat was his punishment for returning to Mexico against his mother’s wishes. His parents had fled north after the death of their young daughter, and raised their children in California where they labored as migrant workers. Corchado returned to Mexico as a journalist in 1994, convinced that Mexico would one day foster political accountability and leave behind the pervasive corruption that has plagued its people for decades. But in this land of extremes, the gap of inequality—and injustice—remains wide. Even after the 2000 election that put Mexico’s opposition party in power for the first time, the opportunities of democracy did not materialize. The powerful PRI had worked with the cartels, taking a piece of their profit in exchange for a more peaceful, and more controlled, drug trade. But the party’s long-awaited defeat created a vacuum of power in Mexico City, and in the cartel-controlled states that border the United States. The cartels went to war with one another in the mid-2000s, during the war to regain control of the country instituted by President Felipe Calderón, and only the violence flourished. The work Corchado lives for could have killed him, but he wasn't ready to leave Mexico—not then, maybe never. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man’s quest to report the truth of his country—as he raced to save his own life.

A travelogue and historical exploration of Mexico from one of the twentieth century’s greatest travel writers Dame Rebecca West travels through Mexico and explores its people, history, religion, and culture in her unfinished work Survivors in Mexico, carefully stitched together by Bernard Schweizer in this posthumously published edition. West tackles the country’s broad historical legacy—the Spanish conquest and Mexican revolution, the muralist movement, race relations, and contemporary life—and delves into the personal, intimate lives of key figures such as Hernán Cortés, Montezuma, Dr. Atl, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky. Conceived as a companion to West’s masterful classic Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, this book showcases the complexity of West’s character, addresses the paradoxes inherent in her work, and allows for a mature understanding of her ideology. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Rebecca West featuring rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, at the University of Tulsa.

Examines the political, economic, and social transformation Mexico has undergone in recent decades, and argues that the United States' antagonistic policy toward the nation is doing more harm than good.

A probing, ground-level investigation of illegal immigration and the people on both sides of the battle to secure the U.S.-Mexico border With illegal immigration burning as a contentious issue in American politics, Reuters reporter Tim Gaynor went into the underbelly of the border and to the heart of illegal immigration: along the 45-mile trek down the illegal alien "superhighway." Through scorpion-strewn trails with Mexican migrants and drug smugglers, he met up with a legendary group of Native American trackers called the Shadow Wolves, and traveled through the extensive network of tunnels, including the "Great Tunnel" from Tijuana to Otay Mesa, California. Along the way, Gaynor also meets Minutemen and exposes corruption among the Border Patrol agents who exchange sex or money for helping smugglers. The issue of illegal immigration has a complexity beyond any of the political rhetoric. Combining top-notch investigative journalism with a narrative style that delves into the human condition, Gaynor reveals the day-to-day realities on both sides of "the line."

A sensory narrative poem capturing the rhythms of the universe and secrets of the subconscious with stunning linguistic dexterity from the author of On the Road A spontaneous writing project in the form of an extended prose poem, this sonorous and spiritually playful book is one of Jack Kerouac’s most boldly experimental works. Collected from five notebooks dating from 1956 to 1959—a time in which Kerouac was immersed in Buddhist theory—Old Angel Midnight is comprised of sixty-seven short sections unified by an unwavering dedication to sounds, the subconscious, and verbal ingenuity. Friday Afternoon in the Universe, in all directions in & out you got your men women dogs children horses pones tics perts parts pans pools palls pails parturiences and petty Thieveries that turn into heavenly Buddha. Thus begins Kerouac’s Joycean language dance. From birdsong to dharmic verse, street jargon to French slang, the resonances of the universe come blaring in though the windows, unfurling their meaning as the mind lets go and listens.

A restless London wife escapes to the Arizona desert to find passion and danger in an “impassioned blockbuster” of a love story (The Independent). Jumping at the chance to spend a year away from her claustrophobic marriage to a workaholic British developer, Alice Coleman takes her two small children to the American desert lands between Arizona and the Mexican border. But the unpredictable southwest has room for the dreams of more than one fugitive. There’s Benjamin, the kindly Mexican caretaker of an abandoned mining town; the desperate immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border; and the laconic cowboy Henry Duval, whose rugged charms are as irresistible to Alice, as his secrets are dark. But when Alice’s husband arrives, the sun-scorched sanctuary turns dangerous. Now Alice must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to preserve not only her freedom, but Benjamin and Duvall’s as well. Both a perilous love story and a compelling exploration of the tension between unrealized ambitions and the pull of family, Midnight Cactus is an “absorbing . . . lively meditation on how far people will go to escape the past” (Entertainment Weekly).

Presents the story of Miguel Sarmiento, a doctor, his aristocratic wife, and young son as they are caught up the Mexican Revolution and the political upheavals and chaos that follows the collapse of the old order.