The Secret of the Incas: Myth, Astronomy, and the War Against Time

Book Description

In the tradition of Fingerprints of the Gods (Crown, 1995; 65,000 sold) and Stonehenge Decoded, this revolutionary new interpretation of the mythology of the Incas offers an astonishing "history of prehistory".

At its peak, the Inca empire was the largest on Earth. Yet in the year 1532, it was conquered by fewer than 200 Spanish adventurers. How could this happen? Approaching the answer clue by clue, William Sullivan decodes the myths of the Incas to reveal that they embody an astoundingly precise record of astronomical events.

In the 15th century, the Inca priest-astronomers read the sky and saw signs of an apocalypse. So the Incas took a desperate gamble: If events in the heavens could influence those on Earth, perhaps the reverse was true. In The Secret of the Incas, Sullivan shows that the Inca rituals of warfare and human sacrifice were nothing less than an attempt to stop time, to forestall the cataclysm that would sweep away their world. This is a work of rare erudition and imagination that will reshape our understanding of the past.

Customer Reviews:

A rambling, biased, tome.......2006-07-23

The author examines Inka and Mayan myths using a variety of tools, and many, many words. To the first myth he applies the theories in Hamlets Mill to explain why the Foxes tail is black and pinpoint AD 650 as the rise of warfare in the Andes. From here it's mostly downhill.

The author then drags us through his own internal mental processes of doubt and disbelief as he looks at other myths. Through this long process he forcefully and unnecessarily brings up many biases such as there is no proof that a matriarchal society ever existed anywhere in the world. Period. He returns to the subject of matriarchal disbelief many times calling it a big 'red flag'. He leads us through his admitted internal stubborness of this and many other issues.

Although I believe the author is correct in his assocation with the Fox's tail being black being a celestial event ala Hamlets Mills, he spends so many words looking at other myths from a plethora of angles that you are forced into a single conclusion. That no one outside of a culture has any clue at what a given myth really means. The entire book is like running naked through the forest yelling out conclusions about myths which rightly are interpreted only by their creators.

At one point in the discussion of 'finding father' he claims that the Andean man lacked a true heart with the ability to love while he was primarily a hunter within a matrilinear horticultural society. Andean man only gained his heart and full ability to love when the culture changed to fully agriculture and he had to stay at home with the wife and kids. Give me a break. To any Andean person alive this is rubbish. What kinds of conclusions and judgements can we make living outside the cultural box. It is this kind of subtle talk that is a jaguars hair short of prejudice and racism.

Ultimately, although if you like reading from the 'academic' view, this book does lead you through enough alleys to make you feel like the author knows what he is talking about, ultimately it fails from it's biases and from being rooted in a combination of sexism and western scientific dogma.

If the author wanted to really understand the Andean mind then he would have had to undergo a process of breaking open his head and surrendering to the mystery of myth reather than trying to break open the myths using the rational mind. Myth is mythic. A view which ultimately escapes the author. It might be worth it to take this book on if you have a university paper to write. It will certainly scintillate your professor being of the same vocabulary and possibly biases. But if you are looking to expanding your understanding of the Inka or Andean cultures from a spiritual or mythic perspective then look elsewhere. Get yourself to South America, Peru, spend time with the shamans. Then you can learn what myth is really about. And how it lives today.

Werner Herzog: Make this Film.......2006-07-11

This book is every bit as entertaining as the run-of-the-mill speculative/paranormal UFO-from-Atlantis books with which it is unfortunately cross-listed on Amazon, but the author's scholarly rigor makes it much more satisfying. Sullivan supports his fascinatingly unconventional conclusions with evidence, sound reasoning, and a bit of self-critical skepticism.

But the real charm of this book is the fact that he pursued such a crazy theory in the first place. Behind the scholarship is a "guy-with-a-crazy-dream" human-interest story (e.g. Fitzcarraldo, Field of Dreams). This would make perfect film material for Werner Herzog. To hear the author tell it, he spent several years in the academic wilderness (as well as the Andean wilderness), chasing after the (wholly-unsupported) hypothesis that Incan myth encodes both astronomy and Andean history. To his advisers, this must have sounded a lot like writing a grant to study the pyramids of Mars. For a lesser intellect, this would have been a career-killer and the reader gets the sense that Sullivan knew it. One of the best parts of the book recounts Sullivan's meeting with Owen Gingerich and "the Vatican Astronomer" at the Harvard planetarium. He's clearly terrified that these eminent astronomers will think he's a kook. But when they conclude: "he's done his homework," Sullivan breathes a sigh of relief.

A word of warning: get the hardback. I got the paperback edition and the binding was defective and the first 50 pages fell out the first time I read them.

Cosmic Relations Incas and Stars.......2005-06-25

The Secret of the Incas : Myth, Astronomy,
and the War Against Time
by WILLIAM SULLIVAN
Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (May 20, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN: 0517888513

COSMIC RELATIONS

'The Secret of the Incas: Myth, Astronomy and the War Against Time' is an incredible collection of research by William Sullivan on ancient myths and their relationship to animals, ancient cultures and astronomical bodies aligned with world events. This book is delightful in knowledge and majorly intense. The following paper was written as an introduction to his work. I am always pleased to bring only the higest quality
research for the reader's enjoyment and education.

Dr. Colette M. Dowell
Circular Times

SECRET OF THE INCAS

By William Sullivan

In 1969 a book was published which figured to revolutionize the study of human history. This was Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time, written by two historians of science, Giorgio de Santillana of MIT and Hertha von Dechend of Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. The startling hypothesis of this book was that myth, on one level, constitutes nothing less than a technical language created to encrypt and pass on very sophisticated astronomical observations related to the precession of the equinoxes.

The precession is a gyroscopic-like wobble of the earth's axis of rotation requiring 26,000 years to complete a single cycle. Two aspects of this work - which the authors themselves styled a "first reconnaissance" into the subject - were pure dynamite. First, if the ideas in the book were true, then those myths which are astronomically encrypted are self-dating, that is they carry a record of a moment in precessional time that is at least as accurate as a radio carbon date. This view renders obsolete the concept of "prehistory" which is defined as "before the written record."

Second the authors found that a very precise and idiosyncratically expressed religious cosmology, linking world ages to the gain or loss (due to precessional motion) of "access" to the Milky Way at solstices and equinoxes is found in cultures all over the world. The clear implication of these ideas was that an unexplored, and highly dramatic history of the human race awaits engagement by students of the human legacy.

I was so bowled over by these ideas when I first encountered them - in 1974 - that I eventually realized I had to know if they were true. The very first thing I learned was that there is no university in world where you can go to learn anything whatsoever about these ideas. The academy, for reasons of its own, has chosen to ignore the profound implications of this work for going on 25 years now.

My own book, The Secret of the Incas: Myth, Astronomy and the War Against Time (Crown 1996), is an account of my own twenty year journey of exploration into the astronomy of myth, and I am happy to report that this odyssey was not undertaken in vain.

The Gateway God of Tiahuanaco Courtesy: 'Secret of the Incas' copyright 1996 William Sullivan

I am now certain that Hamlet's Mill will, sooner or later, revolutionize our understanding of our past and even who we are as human beings. I have taken rather a long time in setting up a brief discussion of my book because I want to make clear that what I found out about the Incas came as a complete surprise. I didn't set out in search of esoteric prophecies or experiments in geomancy on the scale of empire. I had initially chosen the Incas to study because they had no writing and hence relied largely on oral tradition - myth - for the transmission of information across time.

Furthermore, it seemed to me that if the cosmology described in Hamlet's Mill really was operative in the southern Andes, then truly we must be looking at a world-wide phenomenon. From the beginning of my research, however, I was constantly made aware of the strangeness of the events surrounding the formation and destruction of the Inca Empire.

Few people realize that this empire was less than a century old when it was utterly destroyed by a handful of Spanish conquistadors. In 1532 a Spanish expeditionary force of 175 hardened adventurers, under the command of Francisco Pizarro, ascended the Andean massif in search of a fabled Empire of Gold. Unknown to them as they approached two great Inca armies were engaged in the climactic battle of a great civil war of succession. When, on November 15, the Spanish force reached the ridgeline overlooking the valley of Cajamarca the victorious Inca king Atahuallpa was completing the third day of a fast of thanksgiving for his victory. What the Spanish saw was an encamped army of 40,000 men. That night the Spanish made out their wills and said confession. Yet on the morrow, given the advantage of surprise and horses, they would engage this army, capture the Inca and kill or wound 10,000 men.

Only years later would I realize that the legends that the Inca Empire was born under the shadow of a prophecy were all true. About the year 1432 the father of the first Inca Emperor foretold that after five generations of Kings the Empire and its religion would be utterly destroyed. The fifth and last king to rule the Empire unmolested was Huayna Capac, father of Atahuallpa.

In my research I first found that Inca myths did indeed encrypt precessional information. The first stories which I came to understand concerned a "flood" which destroyed the entire "world" but which was survived by a peasant along with his family and flocks who ascended the "highest mountain in the world" to weather the storm. Applying the "tool kit" of Hamlet's Mill, I regarded mythical animals as representing the constellations named after them; topographic references as analogues for positions of the sun on the celestial sphere; and mythical "gods" as planets.

As a result I learned that these flood myths yielded a date of 650 A.D., which corresponds precisely to the latest archaeological findings in the Andes that a repressive, secular and militaristic empire, known as Wari, suddenly conquered the greater portion of the Andean Highlands beginning in the early 7th Century.

The astronomical, or precessional event which took place at this time was the failure (for the first time in 800 years) of the Milky Way to be visible at sunrise on June solstice. In cosmological terms, this meant that the gates of the land of the gods had slammed shut. Years later I would find the myth - the foundation document of the Inca Empire, really - that formed the theoretical basis for the Inca prophecy.

In 1432 the Inca priest astronomers could see that a predictable precessional event loomed in the future, only this time it was the gates to the land of the dead which were about to slam shut. It was this predictable event which gave rise to prophecy. Since the foundations of Andean religion rested upon ritual interchange with the ancestors at December solstice, the closing of the "gate," if taken literally, would indeed bode the end of everything.

Finally, I learned that the Inca Empire was conceived and formed for the sole purpose of stopping this event from happening. The Inca Empire was an experiment in sympathetic magic, designed to stop time in the sense of precessional motion. The primary means for achieving this end were the ritual uses of warfare and of human sacrifice. Since each tribe in the Empire had from the most ancient times considered itself descended from a particular star or constellation, the Incas offered a yearly sacrifice of a child from every tribe in order to send emissaries back to the stars with a single message: "May the earth not turn over, may the sun and moon stay young, may there be peace." a plea to the creator to keep open the bridgehead to tradition that spanned the Milky Way.

The creator's response was a terrible one, for he sent the Spanish, who arrived precisely on time. The Incas were never able to regain the edge which they gave up initially on that first day in Cajamarca, and so the prophecy came true. Now, this is a strange story, a story so powerful in fact that it threatens to swamp what I think is the real significance of the research I have done. The Incas were a test case.

By applying the tools of Hamlet's Mill to a single culture, and in depth, the history of a so-called "prehistoric" people has been rewritten. Along the way I found that the Incas shared with peoples all over the world access to a peculiar meta-language - the technical language of myth - which is so distinctive and so idiosyncratic that no mechanism other than seaborne contact appears adequate to explain its wide diffusion. The implications of this finding are staggering. It means that we are all heirs a world-wide civilization of great time-depth of which we have virtually no notion. The histories of the individual peoples who participated in this great tradition lie gathering dust on dark library shelves, classified as "myths."

Meanwhile the academy continues to turn its back on this, the heritage of the human race, a system of thought which gave rise simultaneously to the human scientific tradition and to human religion as well. Indeed all the world's great religions, including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism, Shamanism and Native American Great Spirit religion, make frequent, respectful reference to this ancient system of thought. From Newgrange in Ireland (ca. 3200 B.C.) to Angkor Wat, from Tiahuanaco to Babylon, from Giza to Hawaii, we live in the ruins of a civilization whose very existence we only dimly suspect.

As the precessional clock ticks onward - a clock whose rhythms the ancients were convinced gave clues to the rhythms of human history - perhaps it is past time that we humans reclaim our history, which is our birthright, and with it perhaps reclaim some of the more sacred aspects of our human nature.

by William Sullivan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Sullivan is a native New Englander. Educated at Harvard College, he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rajasthan India, and later studied the History of Religion under J.G Bennett at Sherborne House in Gloucestershire, England. In 1988, after several years of fieldwork in Peru and Bolivia, he received a doctorate in American Indian Studies from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He lives in central Massachusetts with his wife Penelope and their children Phoebe and Jonathan. There are bears in the backyard.

DR. Colette M. Dowell

Poor book if you are not an expert in mythology.......2004-10-20

If you are not educated in mythology and the like, skip this book. I thought it would describe the history of the Inca Empire and mention mythology while doing so, but this book is MAINLY about the mythology itself. Only for experts in the field if you ask me, not for the general public. Written in a boring style.

Not exactly alternate history.......2002-12-13

While this work does not provide absolute or concrete evidence, it does contain enough documented information that a very small leap of faith in the thought process of the Andean populations present in pre-Columbian SA will convince you of the truth of Mr. Sullivan's meritous effort.
Numerous reviews refer to this as an alternate history work, however off hand there is nothing I remember about it necessarily contradicting accepted history. Mr. Sullivan provides diagrams and star charts (which I later verified w/my own software) to solidify his claims. His years of research paid off with a in my opinion a viable answer to one of history's most difficult-to-answer questions. A definate must buy if you are interested in archaeoastronomy or just an extremely interesting read.

Invading Mexico: America's Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846-1848

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A book that was a pleasure to read
Obviously lacking maps
Excellent Overview of a Forgotten Part of American History
Excellent book on the Mexican War

Invading Mexico: America's Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846-1848
Joseph Wheelan
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Mexico | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States
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ASIN: 078671719X

Book Description

Popular historian Joseph Wheelan recounts James Polk’s strategy of last resort for prying California away from Mexico. He had tried to buy it; he had instructed his agents to encourage a settlers’ revolt. When these measures failed, the impatient president, while cynically condemning Mexico’s anger over America’s annexation of Texas, sent General Zachary Taylor’s army to the Rio Grande River, into territory that Mexico claimed as hers. By provocatively sending Taylor there, the president got his war — and, as bitter corollaries, the scathing criticism of congressional leaders on moral grounds, and Mexico’s lasting distrust of its powerful northern neighbor.

The Mexican War was America’s first truly modern war. Steamships ferried troops, daguerreotypes captured the spectacle of infantry and cavalry marching off to battle, newspapermen reported from the front lines for the first time, and telegraphs helped speed news of victories to eager readers back home. For the first time, large numbers of the regular Army’s field-grade officers were West Point-trained. Weapons technology advances such as the mobile field artillery, the Colt six-shooter and the Sharp’s Rifle gave the U.S. Army daunting firepower. These advantages ensured victory even when Mexican troops outnumbered Americans by as much as 4-to-1.

Customer Reviews:

A book that was a pleasure to read.......2007-09-11

While there are countless books on the civil war, not many that I have found cover the mexican war quite like this one. It's a page turner, you finish the book knowing more then you did before. Since the victors offten write the history this shows a little of the mexican point of view, not a lot but a bit. I am sure the Mexican point of view would be interesting to read. And what really happed somewhere in the middle. But this book does give insight that was lost in my history classes

Obviously lacking maps.......2007-08-26

The author reports that the Duke of Wellington avidly followed the progress of the Mexican War on a map on his library wall. It would have been useful if the author included this map. For a war that stretched from Kansas to California, from to New Orleans to Mexico City, from Santa Fe to San Diego, only a few inadequate and pitiful maps are included. Although I am reasonably familiar with the Southwest, I was constantly referring to an atlas trying to follow the narrative and almost gave up in frustration half-way through the book. I suggest you acquire a good atlas of the Southwest and Mexico if you buy this book.

Excellent Overview of a Forgotten Part of American History.......2007-07-28

For most history fans, the Mexican War is a dort of Terra Incognito between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. If people remember anything it was the impetus for Thoreau to write "Civil Disobedience", a land grab, or the training ground for future Civil War Generals. All of this is covered in Mr. Wheelan's excellent book.
He starts with what led to the war, Manifest Destiny and Polk taking up the mantle of Andrew Jackson. The sordid role of petty polictics could read like today's headlines. The author clearly outlines how the U.S. and Mexico never seriously tried negotiation prior to the war's outbreak. Mexico was still angry about loosing Texas and wanting to avenge his pride.
Wheelan discribes life in the 1840's and innovations like the penny press and its effect on society. He clearly tells how both the regular and volunteer armies were put together and led. The like of the common soldier is also well told. The campaigns are clearly laid out, but my only complaint is that there were too few maps.
As in some periods of warfare, the 2 major leaders, Winfield Scott and Zackery Taylor dispised each other and in almost every way were opposites. But there dislike for each other paled in comparison to their mutual dislike of Polk. There feeling with Polk were mutual. The Mexican part of the war is not neglected.
Overall, I feel that this book and Richard Winder's "Mr. Polk's Army" are 2 essential and complimentary books on understanding the significant but neglected part of American History.

Excellent book on the Mexican War.......2007-04-29

There aren't too many books dealing with the Mexican War of 1846-48, so when I saw this come out in hardcover I had to get it. It was worth the money. Covering the entire conflict, from the Texas Annexation and Slidell's mission to Mexico City to the aftermath of the peace treaty, from James Knox Polk's early career to Abraham Lincoln's rise to fame, from dynamic young republic on the rise to sectional conflict leading to the Civil War, this book covers it all.

The book reads like a novel in many ways. When a battle is covered, the action flows from one part of the field to another, and does so without confusing readers. There are also maps included -- not as many as one would like, but they are there, and the battle maps show positions and movements for people who like such things.

Reading Joe Wheelan's "Invading Mexico," I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the Mexican War of the 1840s and the Iraq War of the 2000s (or Vietnam in the 1960s-70s). Similarities such as the war being launched on questionable pretexts, debates in Congress about the unconstitutionality of the conflict, the antiwar movement in the public, issues of executive privilge, among others. Though not everything is a perfect or even a mediocre parallel, this is a good book to read as a mirror held up to reflect the age we live in right now.

The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border

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Great, real deep
I guess it depends on what you are looking for

The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border
David Bacon
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Case Against Free Trade: GATT, NAFTA, and the Globalization of Corporate Power (An Earth Island Press Book)

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Book Description

Food, televisions, computer equipment, plumbing supplies, clothing. Much of the material foundation of our everyday lives is produced along the U.S./Mexico border in a world largely hidden from our view. Based on gripping firsthand accounts, this book investigates the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on those who labor in the agricultural fields and maquiladora factories on the border. Journalist David Bacon paints a powerful portrait of poverty, repression, and struggle, offering a devastating critique of NAFTA in the most pointed and in-depth examination of border workers published to date.
Unlike journalists who have made brief excursions into strawberry fields and maquiladoras, Bacon has more than a decade's experience reporting on the ground at the border, and he has developed sustained relationships with scores of workers and organizers who have entrusted him with their stories. He describes harsh conditions of child labor in the Mexicali Valley, the deplorable housing outside factories in cities such as Tijuana, and corporate retaliation faced by union organizers. He finds that, despite the promises of its backers, NAFTA has locked in a harsh neoliberal economic policy that has swept away laws and protections that Mexican workers had established over decades. More than a showcase for NAFTA's victims, this book traces the emergence of a new social consciousness, telling how workers in Mexico, the United States, and Canada are now beginning to join together in a powerful new strategy of cross-border organizing as they search for economic and social justice.

Download Description

Food, televisions, computer equipment, plumbing supplies, clothing. Much of the material foundation of our everyday lives is produced along the U.S./Mexico border in a world largely hidden from our view. Based on gripping firsthand accounts, this book investigates the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on those who labor in the agricultural fields and maquiladora factories on the border. Journalist David Bacon paints a powerful portrait of poverty, repression, and struggle, offering a devastating critique of NAFTA in the most pointed and in-depth examination of border workers published to date. Unlike journalists who have made brief excursions into strawberry fields and maquiladoras, Bacon has more than a decade's experience reporting on the ground at the border, and he has developed sustained relationships with scores of workers and organizers who have entrusted him with their stories. He describes harsh conditions of child labor in the Mexicali Valley, the deplorable housing outside factories in cities such as Tijuana, and corporate retaliation faced by union organizers. He finds that, despite the promises of its backers, NAFTA has locked in a harsh neoliberal economic policy that has swept away laws and protections that Mexican workers had established over decades. More than a showcase for NAFTA's victims, this book traces the emergence of a new social consciousness, telling how workers in Mexico, the United States, and Canada are now beginning to join together in a powerful new strategy of cross-border organizing as they search for economic and social justice.

Customer Reviews:

Great, real deep.......2007-04-15

Struggle and hope. That's what I thought of this May the 1st of 2006, when seemingly millions of people across the US, mainly Latinos, rallied to support so-called illegal immigrants. These immigrants have literally spent a long time struggling both in the nations they came from and here in the US as business people get rich from their labor. But that day there was hope. In this day of globalization where corporations have the ultimate freedom to cross borders at will in the search for higher and higher profits, while workers cannot without becoming "illegals", it was a day that seemed to signify that "Si, se peude!" They stood up to a government punishing its own people trying to escape a poverty created by the economic policies created by that very government.

What exactly is going on at the US-Mexican border? It seems so far away to me, but in a town I grew up near, you can see the backlash and blame on immigrants for US citizens losing jobs to what is really that fault of neo-liberal attacks like NAFTA. In Hazleton, PA (about 45 minutes from my native Carbondale), some of the most draconian laws against immigrants ever passed sailed through recently. But it all comes back to the border. It turns out that Mexican immigrants are not so docile after all,and that they, just like any people who have been wronged over and over, will stand up for themselves. David Bacon, a labor journalist who works for the Nation, illustrates this well in "The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U. S./Mexico Border".

Bacon looks at what exactly is happening on the border. He starts by exploring the grape pickers of Southern California. Most had come to the US to seek higher wages than they could have possibly gotten in Mexico. But after NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association), the companies at which they had won better wages after decades of fights with the Caesar Chavez's United Farm Workers (UFW), many suddenly found that they lost these jobs as they moved to Mexico's Mexicali Valley where they could pay those workers as much as a third less than the mainly Mexican immigrants in the US. In the Mexicali Valley, farmworkers (who often bring their children to the fields since there is no affordable school or daycare) could barely afford to pay their bills or get groceries, leading to many families sharing homes in order to pool their resources.

Along this same border has risen the infamous Maquiladora (duty-free and union-free factories) industry, which is now a global term but originated as a term for clothing manufacturers along the US-Mexico border. These have swelled since NAFTA, and one of the allures is that it is very hard to form an independent union in Mexico. However, Bacon illustrates that over the past decade of NAFTA Mexico, several independent unions have arisen in the face of a hostile ruling PRI, and then PAN, governments. At the same time, US unions have begun to pull away from their former cold-war, anti-communist sentiment and have slowly recognized that American workers and Mexican workers both lose because of NAFTA and that they must work together in order to survive, The UE, (United Electrical), an independent union, sent the first support to the new independent unions and conducted co-campaigns on the border to organize Maquiladoras into unions to demand better conditions and wages. Interestingly enough, it also began the question of shifting their tactics, since while US unions usually pressure companies until they can win or get some of their goals, Mexican unions usually see the government as their main enemy since the Mexican government maintains industry control over wages and will often not let companies raise wages if it will effect an entire industry (another reason US companies like moving to Mexico).

Some of the stuff in this book honestly was shocking how far 1st world companies would go to crush 3rd world workers. There are countless stories in "Children of NAFTA" of brutal beatings of union organizers. They (factory managers) shipped in temps in many stories to vote for the company government-sanctioned union in factory-wide elections, which too seemed many times to galvanize Maquiladora workers against the management. Black-lists, revenge wage-reductions, and brutal attacks on factory workers' pro-union demonstrations almost made reading it unbearable. However, as the labor organizers learned to deal with NAFTA, the one thing I came away from is that the only hope that we human beings fighting for a better future for our children have is that we can never turn our backs on anyone in a struggle. If global corporations can be everywhere, labor unions must be too. While we engage in these struggles locally, our minds must think globally, as the phrase goes.

I guess it depends on what you are looking for.......2005-10-20

If you are looking for a biased account of the human tragedy that is Mexican labor, this might be the book for you.

If you are looking for a analysis of what is happening and WHY. You may be disappointed.

David Bacon clearly wishes that he was the Saul Alinsky of Mexico. If you don't know who Saul Alinsky is, you may have just found your next reading subject.

It's not that its poorly written. It is just not impressive in any way. If you can't get enough of Mexico or if you need something to read between globalization protests, you will love it. But its hard to just jump in with an open mind and not be disappointed.

Surviving Mexico's Dirty War: A Political Prisoner's Memoir (Voices of Latin American Life)

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Inside Cold War Mexico

Surviving Mexico's Dirty War: A Political Prisoner's Memoir (Voices of Latin American Life)
Alberto Ulloa Bornemann
Manufacturer: Temple University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

Inside Cold War Mexico.......2007-02-16

This book is an honest account of one's mans many experiences with several left-wing organizations in Mexico during the sixties and seventies. He personally chaffeured guerrillas throughout Mexico to transfer weapons, meet up with other leftists, and get money and medicine to the guerrillas in southern Mexico. But, he paid a heavy price for his idealistic actions--he was kidnapped and tortured and held at Mexico's infamous Military Camp No. 1 for over two months never knowing his fate. Luckily he has lived to tell the tale of the horrific human right's abuses commited by the government in military during these years.

The General and the Jaguar: Pershing's Hunt for Pancho Villa: A True Story of Revolution & Revenge

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Pancho Villa and Black Jack Pershing
Excellent account of the events in Mexico before WWI
The Columbus Raid and its aftermath.
a little too much fluff
Good book about Villas' Columbus Raid

The General and the Jaguar: Pershing's Hunt for Pancho Villa: A True Story of Revolution & Revenge
Eileen Welsome
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
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ASIN: 0316715999

Book Description

On March 9, 1916, a band of Mexican marauders led by Pancho Villa crossed the border and raided the tiny town of Columbus, New Mexico. A military expedition was hastily organized to go into Mexico and capture Villa, suspects were rounded up, trials were held, and a virulent backlash against persons of Mexican origin erupted on the local and national scenes. General John Black Jack Pershing, once a genuine fan of Villas, accompanied by a young George Patton, was told to assemble a group of soldiers, head into Mexico, and get Villadead or alive. The last hurrah for the U.S. Cavalry, the expedition would be the first time armored tanks, airplanes, and trucks were employed against an enemy. But as they descended into the nightmare of Mexico, the American troops were followed by spies and picked off by snipers, fought violent battles, and suffered in the scorching deserts and snowy mountains. Some would never return home alive. A brutal tale of revenge and violence, Eileen Welsomes richly detailed account is equal parts Sam Peckinpah, Cormac McCarthy, and Stephen Ambrose.

Customer Reviews:

Pancho Villa and Black Jack Pershing.......2007-07-14

As one who fell in love with Mexico in 1964, I continue to read most of what comes out in print with relation to that country. This book has information about Pershing that I knew nothing about, and reveals much of a personal nature about him and about Francisco Villa.

The struggles of the U. S. soldiers as they search for the elusive Villa
make an interesting story-- one that got lost because the incursion into Mexico was followed so quickly by World War I. I wonder, for example, how many of the soldiers who were in Mexico went on to the European war.

I had the great good fortune to hear a lecture by one of Villa's secretaries.

I am still in love with Mexico after all these years!

Norma Williamson

Excellent account of the events in Mexico before WWI.......2007-06-12

The author has done her homework with this fine piece of history. I have read much on this subject and was hoping to find out more details about the Punitive Expedition mounted by America to track down Pancho Villa and his bandit army. She paints Villa and the other leaders of the 'Revolution' as most of them were: brutal killers seeking wealth and power and a few betterment of the people of Mexico. Lots of details about the Villiast raid on Columbus, NM, the numerous skirmishes between US troops and various factions of Mexican forces of all sorts.
Plenty of drama and some good information about Villa's background, experiences during the revolution as well as those of Obregon, Madero, Zapata and many others.
Worth reading as her style is easy to follow and sometimes humerous and insightful.
I give it thumbs up. Enjoy as it might lead the reader to seek more information about this fascinating period of US/Mexican history.

The Columbus Raid and its aftermath........2007-06-04

A former guerrilla ally of the United States turns his vengence on the U.S. A President who wanted to tend to the domestic ills of the United States is drawn into a foreign conflict. An intervention is attempted which results in native aggravation at the United States. History repeats itself. The time is 1916 and the terrorist act is at Columbus, New Mexico-a sleepy border town. Pancho Villa kills a lot of innocent men. Americans are now his enemy. The Americans intervene in Mexico and try to track him down. They nearly suceed. Time give Villa the punishment he deserves.

This is an interesting book about earlier terrorism. Not much is written about the Columbus raid. Welsome does a good job of describing the killings of Pancho Villa and his Division of the North in the 1916-17 period. This should be read in light of the current war on terror.

a little too much fluff.......2007-06-03

I enjoyed the book, but I thought it could have been shortened considerably if Welsome would have left out the numerous paragraphs about what someone was thinking or might have thought as they rode a horse through the mountains. It had a little too much fluff for me and for a book that has a title that indicates it is about 2 military leaders I was left with the feeling it was a so-so attempt to create a romanticized old west tale. I would have liked to seen more actual military history instead of the speculation fluff that fills so many pages. The book is nice but if you want a military history book, this isn't it.

Good book about Villas' Columbus Raid.......2007-03-19

The book is excellent from a historical perspective. Ms. Welsome thoroughly researched the topic and presented her findings in a very readable manner. The only negative is that it wasn't told as exciting as some other period non-fiction I've read. But this is really nitpicking though, as I thought it was a fine book all things considered.

Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope (California Series in Public Anthropology)

Average customer rating:

Really excellent book

Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope (California Series in Public Anthropology)
Beatriz Manz
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520246756

Book Description

Paradise in Ashes is a deeply engaged and moving account of the violence and repression that defined the murderous Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s. In this compelling book, Beatriz Manz--an anthropologist who spent over two decades studying the Mayan highlands and remote rain forests of Guatemala--tells the story of the village of Santa María Tzejá, near the border with Mexico. Manz writes eloquently about Guatemala's tortured history and shows how the story of this village--its birth, destruction, and rebirth--embodies the forces and conflicts that define the country today.
Drawing on interviews with peasants, community leaders, guerrillas, and paramilitary forces, Manz creates a richly detailed political portrait of Santa María Tzejá, where highland Maya peasants seeking land settled in the 1970s. Manz describes these villagers' plight as their isolated, lush, but deceptive paradise became one of the centers of the war convulsing the entire country. After their village was viciously sacked in 1982, desperate survivors fled into the surrounding rain forest and eventually to Mexico, and some even further, to the United States, while others stayed behind and fell into the military's hands. With great insight and compassion, Manz follows their flight and eventual return to Santa María Tzejá, where they sought to rebuild their village and their lives.

Customer Reviews:

Really excellent book.......2006-11-04

I bought this to accompany me on a trip to Guatemala. Although it was painful to read, it absorbed me in the country's history in a very enriching way, and altered my perspective considerably. I highly, highly recommend this book.

Average customer rating:

Scenes from a revolution
Revolutionaries or Bandits
good book
Need to give it a chance...
Devastating and Meaningless

The Underdogs
Mariano Azuela
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0451526252

Book Description

The news spread like lightning. Villa--the magic word! The Great Man, the salient profile, the unconquerable warrior who, even at a distance, exerts the fascination of a reptile, a boa constrictor.

Download Description

The news spread like lightning. Villa--the magic word! The Great Man, the salient profile, the unconquerable warrior who, even at a distance, exerts the fascination of a reptile, a boa constrictor.

Customer Reviews:

Scenes from a revolution.......2007-05-20

This novel, although mostly a series of vignettes with only the slightet of plot and character development, never the less delivers a harrowing descripton of the Mexican Revolution.

Revolutionaries or Bandits.......2006-09-24

Mariano Azuela's novel about a group of men fighting in the decade-long Mexican Revolution is a seminal work in Latin American literature. As the concluding essay notes, Azuela's ability to accurately depict all that is most surreal in reality was the starting point for more modern magical realist authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is a stand-out novel written in a sparse, at times dreamlike style.

The Underdogs, or Los de Abajo, reveals Azuela's ambivalence about the Revolutionary movement. While it is clear that the men persecuting the hero, Demetrio Macias, are not the men one wants controlling the state, Azuela also doesn't hesitate to depict the revolutionaries themselves as bandits, stealing from the peasants they are supposed to defend. The conflict over whether the Mexican Revolutionaries were soldiers or bandits is one that may be found in history books. Azuela's semi-autobiographical novel doesn't offer an answer to that question, but it does provide what some of the most famous historical literature does not: a depiction of the hellishness of war. In that alone, it is a good companion reading to any nonfiction accounts of the Revolution.

Frederick Fornoff's translation is mostly well-done, though his decision not to keep in the dialect in which most of the characters speak is, in my opinion, a poor one. There was an enormous cultural divide between the average revolutionary and the Mexicans living in cities or haciendas. I feel that Azuela's original language reflected that divide. However, this edition is still worth buying, because the concluding essay on Azuela's place in Latin American and epic literature is both poignant and revealing. The Underdogs is a grand novel, for both literature and history buffs.

good book.......2006-03-15

book is excellente. I would recommend this acclaimed book for further study anytime. I appreciate the simplicity and outright insight in the time of a heartless revolution. Please pick this book up when you have the time.

matthew ellsworth

Need to give it a chance..........2005-08-09

The translation or something about the way it was written made it a bit confusing at first, but once you "get" the "writing style" of the book, you will be glad you kept reading.

Devastating and Meaningless.......2005-04-08

THE UNDERDOGS may well be about the spirit of the Mexican people, as some other reviews have suggested, but its conclusions are quite different. Don't think this is some inspiring story of the noble masses and their unconquerable spirit!

Azuela was writing in response to previous romantic depictions of the Mexican revolution -- you know, Pancho Villa the poor heroic figure of the countryside. Many had argued -- and still are, as you can see from some of these other reviews -- that the revolution was a turning point and created a new, more modern mexico.

In response, Azuela skewered the revolution. His story has almost no dates or locations -- you won't learn anything about the historical facts, as the encyclopedia would define them, of the revolution from this book. What Azuela does depict are the people and their spirit -- but he does this in shockingly unflattering terms.

Much of the book is a parade of violent scene after violent scene. Houses are ransacked, artwork destroyed, people casually killed, women casually raped. For U.S. audiences today, the book might remind us of the film NATURAL BORN KILLERS in terms of its consistent violence with little morality attached.

Moreover, these are not revolutionaries with much of an idea what they are doing. Yes, they are the underdogs of the title. But the underdogs do not want a better state -- a better nation. They mock Cervantes, the intellectual among them. No, the underdogs want to be top dog -- to exploit just as those they replace.

This devastating message is the one the book leaves us: the revolution meant nothing, achieved nothing, and was nothing but Mexico's underdogs lashing out savagely.

It is an easy and enjoyable read, but it can leave you with a Nietzchean feeling that none of this matters...

-- Julian Darius

Red Sky at Morning: A Novel (Perennial Classics)

Average customer rating:

Farolitos and chamisa
An All-Time Coming of Age Story
Wonderful Read
My copy is literally falling apart, I've read it so much.
For Some Books you should be able to give 10 Stars

Red Sky at Morning: A Novel (Perennial Classics)
Richard Bradford
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0060931906
Release Date: 1999-05-05

Book Description

The classic coming-of-age story set during World War II about the enduring spirit of youth and the values in life that count.

Customer Reviews:

Farolitos and chamisa.......2007-07-02

I grew up in Santa Fe, reading this book, serving Mr. Bradford coffee at Zook's Pharmacy on the Plaza. Mr. Bradford's book reassured me that my turbulent adolescence was do-able, by lighting the way.
I have not been back there in thirty years. Santa Fe has been taken over by the rich and the entitled and they have squeezed the soul out of what we knew growing up there, though there is plenty of beauty and spirit left to be sucked dry by the commercial people. But if you want to know the siren song of Santa Fe, read this book. Sagrado is, indeed, Santa Fe. This was what it was like there even in the 1960's and 1970's.
I mean, where else could you have that unforgettable horse AND world-class opera AND the mountains AND the humility of entertaining the Native Americans by just being white people on the Plaza?
I read this book, I can smell the pine wood burning in the farolitos, and the breeze in the chamisa after the Summer afternoon cloudbursts.

An All-Time Coming of Age Story.......2007-05-06

This is a wondrous short novel. Read it if you'd like to be a teenager again. Buy an old paperback copy showing a teenage boy and girl standing facing each other with their foreheads touching--a very sweet illustration.

Sometimes the covers of books actually decline in quality with the many printings of a book. A fine example is the early cover for "Summer of Night," by Dan Simmons.Summer of Night (Aspect Fantasy) The 1991 "Warner Book" edition has a window with a cut out. Through the window you can see some boys riding their bicycles at night. When you open the book, you see a mysterious school in the background.

The later covers of "Summer of Night" were not half as mysterious or fun.

Wonderful Read.......2006-07-20

I thouroughly enjoyed this book, I do not know how I missed it for so many years. It was recommended in Nancy Pearl's "Book Lust" (which you really should buy if you are an avid reader.) I have never been dissapointed by her recommendations.

Josh, as the narrator in "Red Sky at Morning" is a 17 year old high school senior at the end of WWII. His dry wit mad me laugh right out loud several times. I loved his sensibility and humor. The cast of characters in this book reminded me of some of the characters in "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving.

This is one of my favorite reads of the year, so much so I will probably hunt down a hard cover edition for my collection.

My copy is literally falling apart, I've read it so much. .......2006-04-16

As many others have said, it's impossible to get tired of this book. My parents gave it to me when I was 18 and (again, like several others) the first time I read it I found it a little slow and disjointed. It gets better and better with every read - each time I pick up on the subtleties of a scene for the first time.

Rather than boring the reader with a bunch of obnoxious capers and hijinks, Bradford envelops you in his characters' community, and it's this day-to-day banality (which turned me off so much the first time) that really draws you into the story. Josh's adjustment to Sagrado takes time, but when it comes it's so natural and amusing that you're almost completely unprepared for the sobering conclusion of the story.

I had no idea the book was so loved until I read these reviews. There are so many special moments in the story - the big wet snowfalls that ruins Chamaco's fiesta, the horribly backward residents of La Cima, the refreshing "white trashiness" of the Cloyd sisters, even Parker Holmes tearing an elk sandwich apart with his teeth.

I wish these characters existed in real life, and I wish I could be their friend.

For Some Books you should be able to give 10 Stars.......2006-04-10

And this would be one of them. I've reread this book several times. It always makes me laugh out loud. It always makes me tear up. It always makes me hope I'll meet some folks like the characters in the book. When I am in this book, I'm "in" it and the visits are enduring and wonderful.

Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s

Average customer rating:

Excellent Start
Read before you review, please
Tenditious and Without Perspective
A Great Addition to Mexican-American History
ERacism

Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s
Francisco E. Balderrama , and Raymond Rodríguez
Manufacturer: University of New Mexico Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0826339735

Book Description

During the Great Depression, a sense of total despair plagued the United States. Americans sought a convenient scapegoat and found it in the Mexican community. Laws forbidding employment of Mexicans were accompanied by the hue and cry to "get rid of the Mexicans!" The hysteria led pandemic repatriation drives and one million Mexicans and their children were illegally shipped to Mexico.

Despite their horrific treatment and traumatic experiences, the American born children never gave up hope of returning to the United States. Upon attaining legal age, they badgered their parents to let them return home. Repatriation survivors who came back worked diligently to get their lives back together. Due to their sense of shame, few of them ever told their children about their tragic ordeal.

Decade of Betrayal recounts the injustice and suffering endured by the Mexican community during the 1930s. It focuses on the experiences of individuals forced to undergo the tragic ordeal of betrayal, deprivation, and adjustment. This revised edition also addresses the inclusion of the event in the educational curriculum, the issuance of a formal apology, and the question of fiscal remuneration.

"Francisco Balderrama and Raymond RodrÃguez, the authors of Decade of Betrayal, the first expansive study of Mexican repatriation with perspectives from both sides of the border, claim that 1 million people of Mexican descent were driven from the United States during the 1930s due to raids, scare tactics, deportation, repatriation and public pressure. Of that conservative estimate, approximately 60 percent of those leaving were legal American citizens. Mexicans comprised nearly half of all those deported during the decade, although they made up less than 1 percent of the country's population. 'Americans, reeling from the economic disorientation of the depression, sought a convenient scapegoat,' Balderrama and RodrÃguez wrote. 'They found it in the Mexican community.'--American History

Decade of Betrayal focuses on the experiences of individuals illegally shipped from the U.S. to Mexico in the 1930s and the recent questions of a formal apology and fiscal remuneration.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Start.......2005-10-03

Balderrama explores an over looked chapter in American history--the deportation of hundreds of thousands of American citizens of Mexican descent during the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, he tries to argue that repatriation was not economically feasible for employers. I say what difference does it make? It's the same old argument we hear now: They do jobs nobody else will do. But what if they didn't? The fact is, the government has no right to deport its citizens, regardless of what they do for a living, regardless of their race/ethnicity/skin color.

Thios book is a great start, but more scholarship needs to be done in this area.

One of my great uncles, an American citizen of Mexican descent, was deported by the US government during the Depression because they wanted to free up jobs for the dustbowl refugees. To the reviewer who calls this sad chapter in our nation's history a "minor incident," I wonder how he would feel if he were uprooted and taken by the US government to a foreign country.

The reason this reviewer thinks something this huge is a "minor incident" is that he doesn't view people of Mexican descent as truly American. He sees anybody of Mexican descent as foreign even if they are American citizens just like him and therefore thinks it's no big deal for them to have been deported. Many of the American citizens who were deported had never been to Mexico and could not Speak Spanish. But even if they could, they were still AMERICANS and had every right to live and work in the United States, the nation of their birth, as much as any other American citizen.

Read before you review, please.......2005-06-18

I am wondering whether a few of the other reviewers have actually read Balderrama's book. I haven't finished it yet, but even I have figured out that Balderrama and Rodriguez are writing about how not only Mexican nationals were 'repatriated,' but also US-born, US citizens who happened to be of Mexican ancestry (and most likely not pale-skinned enough).

One of the principal questions the authors pose is: what is the relationship between legal citizenship and cultural citizenship? In other words, if even citizens get deported, many to a country they have never even seen, because of their imputed race, what does citizenship even mean? This question is very relevant today given the current scrutiny by ICE of immigrants, legal or not, and by all of DHS of citizens, especially those who fit certain suspect profiles.

The most interesting part of the book for me so far is the authors' in-depth look at Mexican families in the US in this period. In particular, their portrait of how families of Mexican descent were stereotyped and misunderstood by both the US and Mexican governments, and how as a result immigration and welfare policies were poorly formulated. It's worth thinking about how government policy can work (directly or indirectly) to either strengthen or break up families--and how many Mexican/American families (by this I mean families comprising people with Mexican and US citizenship) managed to stay together despite the economic and political struggles they faced.

Tenditious and Without Perspective.......2004-02-02

The deportations of the 1930s need to be put into historical perspective and not just labeled as another incident of how bad America is to Mexicans. In 1924, the Immigration Act shut down immigration from Europe; Mexicans were EXEMPTED from such quotas between 1924 and 1965 (unacknowledged by most Chicano polemicists who can't deal with the fact that a policy was biased against white Europeans benefitted non whites). According to historian John Womack, some 900,000 Mexicans entered the US between 1924 and 1930, some 630,000 illegally. So this wave continued unabated into the Depression, and with 25% unemployment, the Federal government decided to crack down on this migration. Europeans were not targeted because the waves of immigartion had already been shut down, and those who did enter did so legally throught the nation's ports; most Mexicans entered through a land border. Abraham Hoffman puts the number involved and deportedat 400,000, not 1 million, with about half leaving voluntarily and half forced. Fifty percent were US citizens, largely the children of illegal immigrants who left with their parents. Of course, there were many cases of discrimination, as Manuel Gonzeles points out, where the methods used, especially in Los Angeles, were heavy handed and even in some cases illegal. These individulas should receive compensation. But it is ridiculous to compare this to the forced migration of Indians or to say that this was a program of complete discrimination ala those which targeted African Americans, even though there were individual cases of such.

As for those who took Balderrama as a professor, of course Chicano activists want to portary all of their problems and poverty as simply the result of racist Anglos versus innocent Mexicans. While legal discrimination did exist in many individual areas in the Southwest, particularly South Texas, thsi ignores the fact that more than two-thirds of all Mexican immigrants have no high school diploma (versus only 8% of native whites and 13% of Asian immigrants), that more than 4 out of 5 are not proficient in English, or that Asian immigrants and their children, despite being subject to historically more vicious legal racism, actually do better than whites !!!The vast majority of Mexicans are immigrants or their immediate children who arrived after 1965, whose presence makes the tracking and progress of wages for Mexican Americans very difficult to measure.

Between 1920 and 1970, Mexicans were considered legally white by the govt.; they were allowed to intermarry with whites (unlike blacks and Asians); were allowed to get citizenship upon arrival (unlike Asian immigrants); served in all-white units during the SEcond World War (unlike blacks and Japanese); could vote and hold elected office in places such as Texas, especially San Antonio (unlike blacks); ran the state politics and elite of New Mexico since colonial times; went to integrated schools in Central Texas and Los Anegeles (unlike Blacks in the south and Asians in Southern California); were not subjected to immigration quotas like Europeans and Asians between 1924 and 1965.

According to the PPIC, Hispanics with similar education and occupation as whites make just as much in income; Asians in the similar situation make 10 to 15% MORE!!!! So while racism has been a factor, it is not the determining factor as to why Mexicans do or do not succeed. This is too much for Chicano professors and activists to acknowledge since their world is framed around victimology.

Chris

A Great Addition to Mexican-American History.......2003-11-15

Dr. Balderrama is a great historian. His research into the Mexican repatriation is told magnificently. I also happen to be one of his former students at CSULA. I do remember his class and enjoyed his lectures. Unlike other history professors at CSULA, his style of teaching and lecturing was memorable. His contribution to Mexican American history is invaluable. Great book! *****.

ERacism.......2003-09-17

I read the review by Michael Sturdevant and think he is probably a racists. I have took classes with Dr. Balderrama and can tell you he is a excellent teacher. He teaches his Chicano students about victimology and how they are victims of white America. This is very true. Some teachers think that Chicanos are struggling to get ahead because they are not as educated as white people. But Balderrama teached us that it is because we are victims that we can't make enough as the white people.

Amazon.com

A successful thriller tells an exciting, satisfying story and lets us look at the lives of some interesting people in an environment either totally new or freshly observed. Former publishing executive Joseph Kanon's first novel does all of that, and adds a layer of acute perception about recent history that immediately vaults it up into the hallowed heights of John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumn--thrillers that deserve space next to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. In the spring of 1945, as the war in Europe is coming to an end, a former police reporter turned Army Intelligence agent named Mike Connolly arrives on the high mesa above Santa Fe, New Mexico, where J. Robert Oppenheimer and a team of scientists are rushing to finish their atomic bomb. A security man has been found battered to death, and Connolly's job is to see if it is anything more than the sordid sex crime it appears to be. Using a devilishly clever mixture of real and fictional characters, Kanon spins out a story that manages to be audacious, persuasive--and totally engrossing.

Book Description

In a dusty, remote community of secretly constructed buildings and awesome possibility, the world's most brilliant minds have come together. Their mission: to split an atom and end a war. But among those who have come to Robert Oppenheimer's "enchanted campus" of foreign-born scientists, baffled guards, and restless wives is a simple man, an unraveler of human secrets—a man in search of a killer.

It is the spring of 1945. And Michael Connolly has been sent to Los Alamos to investigate the murder of a security officer on the Manhattan Project. But amid the glimmering cocktail parties and the staggering genius, Connolly will find more than he bargained for. Sleeping in a dead man's bed and making love to another man's wife, Connolly has entered the moral no-man's-land of Los Alamos. For in this place of discovery and secrecy, hope and horror, Connolly is plunged into a shadowy war with a killer—as the world is about to be changed forever....

Customer Reviews:

As good or better than Stallion Gate.......2007-07-20

Stallion Gate
I suppose if security at Los Alamos had been better, the idealistic friends
wouldn't have been able to ship the plans out.
All these words on sex, cheating and spies and never a mention of Klaus Fuchs.
I had read all this before with pretty much the same characters and scenes in Stallion Gate.
We actually need the equivalent of a Manhattan project for fusion in these days of global warming,
but they already have the Teller-Ulam-Sakarhov H-Bomb! The government seems to only get up for weapons?
The question will always remain: was Oppie a spy or not?
Even after Fuchs was uncovered, a probable spy remained
who leaked the H-bomb plans.
Candidates are:
William Teller
Stanislaw Ulam
John von Neumann
J.Robert Oppenheimer
My guess is that it was a team effort.
They were a brotherhood of idealists.

A Gripping Story.......2007-07-12

One of the most interesting stories of 20th century America is the story of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. But it was always subliminal to me, I think because of my loathing of the bomb in particular and war in general. Besides, I was only eight years old in August, 1945. This book brought Los Alamos and all it represents into focus. The murder/spy story is the ostensible reason for the book, but what makes it resonate is its New Mexico setting: Los Alamos, 1945, and all the awful implications of making the "gadget". I live in New Mexico, have been to Los Alamos, and could follow the action of the novel on various maps. It is accurate. I also checked out the Los Alamos National Laboratories web site and could see pictures of some of the characters that are drawn from history, and could get some idea of how the place looked then, how the inhabitants lived, and the stresses they were under.

As is his wont, Kanon begins his tale with slow, measured advances. By the second half the conflicts have mounted, the moral ambiguities are established, and the tension is palpable. Plot, character and setting have combined to make you very glad you bought and read this book.

Historically interesting mystery hopes to go to Hollywood.......2007-01-04

This novel is a cut above the usual police/detective/mystery/spy potboiler inasmuch as its setting is of historical interest--and importance. Kanon has done excellent background research on the Los Alamos project and the New Mexico setting for the Manhattan Project. His historical and political characterization is perceptive and for many younger readers, especially, even educational. The plot structure is nuanced and clever, right down to the resolution of the mystery, which had me, at least, slapping my forehead bleating, "Why didn't I figure that out earlier myself?" Maybe I'm thick, but this obvious-after-the-case resolution is to me the sign of a well-crafted story.

It seems, however, that whenever a novelist invests the time and effort to spin a yarn of this magnitude, there is a little voice suggesting that maybe just maybe, this is the stuff of which Hollywood films are made. That's my explanation, at least, of why Kanon seemed compelled to incorporate some fairly pedestrian and sometimes embarrassingly juvenile romantic and sexual hijinks into his story. The interaction between the protagonist Michael Connelly and the barb-tongued British wife of a project scientist seems as adolescent as it is improbable. The sex scenes are cliched and just plain silly.

But given the overall quality of the novel otherwise, I can forgive Kanon this indulgence, and I think other readers will, as well. Let me add here that I was intrigued by the name of the story's hero, Michael Connelly. Is it sheer coincidence that this character's real life namesake is one of the leading mystery writers working today? I doubt it.

Mystery and the Bomb in the high New Mexico desert.......2006-10-10

I spent a goodly chunk of my formative years in the deserts of New Mexico. So naturally, whenever a book about New Mexico rolls about, I try and take a look at it, especially when it deals with Los Alamos, a tiny scrap of a town that is up high in the Jemez mountains in the northern part of the state. It's a beautiful place, full of twisting roads, amazing geology, and magnificent views. It's also rather isolated, and it was here in the 1940's that one of the most intriguing secrets of World War II took place -- the development of the atomic bombs that would later devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Author Joseph Kanon uses the background of the Manhattan Project, and the world of the American southwest to create a world that is in a momumental race against time, and that left an echo that is still resounding to this day. It's tightly written thriller that sends goosebumps up the spine and still manages to leave the reader guessing as to what is really going on, despite the knowledge that we know what is going to happen.

The story opens with Michael Connelly arriving in the capital of New Mexico, Santa Fe, that is perched on the edge of the Rio Grande river. He has been sent by the government to discover who killed a man whose body has been found in a city park. The powers that be want the case hushed up and done with, with as little fuss and mess as possible, for the murdered man, Karl Bruner, was a security officer at the town of Los Alamos, site of a project that the locals know about, but not the purpose of.

And there are plenty of secrets to be uncovered here. Bruner, who was beaten to death, and left with his pants down around his knees, is a touchy case. Everyone, it seems, want the case to go away, from Santa Fe's police chief, Holliday, to General Groves, the head of the Project, and Connelly's assistant, Mills. But to balance that, there are the scientists at Los Alamos, especially Robert Oppenheimer, a man of vision, and a quiet physicist, Eisler, who creates a bond with Connelly. Finally, Connelly encounters a British woman, Emma, who is married to one of the researchers.

Along the way, I found myself finding out about some aspects of World War II on the civilian front that I didn't know anything about. There are censors, rationing, and the unsettling knowledge that while Hitler has been defeated and the war in Europe is over, there is a far far more dangerous threat looming on the horizon. And it seems that Santa Fe and Los Alamos is simply crawling with spies, or possible spies, everywhere. There is also the plight of Jews, homosexuals and the prejudice that plagued everyone who wasn't white, male and politically left that fuels an undercurrent of hatred throughout the story.

What I really enjoyed about this novel was that Kanon weaves in a lot of lore about New Mexico into his story, from the local inhabitants of Anglos, Spanish and the Indians, to the spectacular landscape, and the distinct feel that the visitor has come to a place that is different than anything else that can be found. Along the way I found out things about the ancient Anasazi, who vanished, the lore of the gemstone turquoise, and other tidbits that helped me to recall my own memories of the place.
Kanon's narrative flows well, balancing out descriptive narrative, and long sections of dialogue. While the dialogue does get overwrought at times -- this is the reason why this novel got four stars, not five -- Kanon is careful enough to keep the story from bogging down into too much detail over nuclear physics, but also focused on the case of Karl Bruner. Mystery fans will have a good time sorting out the red herrings, and there is enough historical detail that makes this a very believable novel.

Another enjoyable bit is that Kanon uses historical figures such as the scientists in very convincing ways, and stays within what is known about them. While Connelly and Emma are fictional, what occurs in the story from April to July 1945 is not, and those who have remained fascinated by the Manhattan Project will have a good time picking out the real figures of Oppenheimer, Weber, Groves, and others. And yes, the fact that the researchers played outrageous pranks on the security guards is quite true.

I happily recommend this one, and also Kanon's later novel, The Good German, for two unique views of WWII that goes beyond the battlefields, and takes a look at the inner world of the people that lived through that time.

Perfect combo of mystery and love story.......2006-08-11

This is on my top books of all time list. A great read.

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