Mexico

By Peter Calvert

This book seeks to tell the history of Mexico since the outbreak of the Revolution in 1910, setting it however in a wider historical context. It describes the period of civil war, the re-emergence of stable government and the consolidation in the 1930s of the so-called 'Institutionalized Revolution. It then covers in detail the exciting events of the last fifty years, the ebbing of the revolutionary impetus, the fall of the PRI in 2000 and the new regime, taking in on the way the "tequila crisis", the assassination of an Archbishop and a presidential candidate, the guerrilla outbreak in Chiapas, entry into NAFTA, the drug wars and the tension between national aspirations and the 'Washington consensus'. The structure is unusual. The book is written in a simple interlocking pattern of short sections, of four kinds: a basic historical narrative, sections dealing with topics deriving from the narrative, short biographical notes on prominent Mexicans and "voices" - brief, impressionistic collections of quotations representing successive historical periods.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Calvert
• Release date: Dec 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301960392

Peter Calvert

Peter Calvert was born in Northern Ireland in 1936 and grew up there. In 1948, on the first day of the school holidays, it was raining, so he sat down at his father's old typewriter and began to write The King of the Land of Flopdoodle. It took a long time, as every time he made a mistake he tore the page up and started again. When the story was finished, in 1950, he began a sequel, which eventually became Revolution in Flopdoodle and The Flopdudlian 'Forty-Five'. Peter Calvert is author or joint author of more than thirty books. He was Professor of Comparative and International Politics at the University of Southampton from 1984 until his retirement in 2002. He was educated at Campbell College, Belfast, and Queens' College, Cambridge. He then worked for a year as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Michigan, before returning to Cambridge to study for his doctorate. In 1964 he joined the newly founded department of Politics at Southampton. He later held visiting appointments at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Harvard University, Birkbeck College, London, and the University of Portsmouth. He has written and published extensively on Comparative and International Politics, especially that of Latin America and the USA, as well as on aspects of the theory of Comparative Politics, in particular revolution, class and development. His new history of modern Mexico focuses on the story of the years since 1910, setting it in the context of the nation's past.

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