A history of Mexico

Fire and Blood is popular history in the best sense, though not without some of the faults of the genre. On the positive side, the author presents a strong, clear narrative based on an impressive array of published sources, mostly in Spanish. His account is reasonably well-balanced. The only characters presented as purely black are Victoriano Huerta, whose dictatorship sparked the Mexican Revolution and led to the constitution of 1917, and the U.S. ambassador of the time, Henry Lane Wilson. The only unblemished angel is Álvaro Obregón, whose post-Revolution presidency set the template for Mexican governance, for better or worse, until the collapse of the PRI's political monopoly at the turn of the 21st Century.

On the negative side, most historians would be delighted to be as certain about anything as Mr. Fehrenbach is about everything. There is no doubt in his narrative, no need to resolve conflicting judgments about men or events. The complete absence of footnotes makes it difficult to check the bases for the text's confident assertions. In this respect, the book is more like a nonfiction novel than a work of history.

The author's evaluations also waver strangely. He routinely praises the policies of "state capitalism" followed by most Mexican administrations since the Revolution, insisting that the country lacked the human and economic wherewithal for a genuine free market. Yet he also routinely deplores the inequality, poverty, corruption and bureaucratic misrule that are dirigisme's most conspicuous progeny.

Fire and Blood was originally published in 1972, then brought up to date in 1995. It thus covers only the early phases of the transition to multi-party democracy and completely omits the rise of the drug cartels and the ensuing de facto civil war. For readers who want to know what led up to Mexico's present distress, the book is a lively and generally reliable guide. ( )