100 Best Mexico Books of All Time (Updated for 2026)

1

Like Water for Chocolate

Laura Esquivel, Carol Christensen, Thomas Christensen

5.0

Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.

The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphi

2

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Christopher McDougall

4.9

Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we tho

Recommended by Ed Stafford and Turia Pitt.

Ed Stafford

An honour to be asked to do an impromptu little talk tonight after #christophermcdougall. Great to see the big man in the flesh in the UK. #BornToRun was a book that definitely changed the path of my life. #legend @vivobarefoot #barefootrunning https://t.co/3QgVKZ0OQ4 [source]

Turia Pitt

If people are interested in running, I give them this book. [source]

3

All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

Cormac McCarthy

4.8

All the Pretty Horses tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border Mexico beckons—beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

Recommended by Daniel Buttner, Devon Sawa, Meg Rosoff, and 1 others.

Daniel Buttner

Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors, specifically The Border Trilogy. [source]

Devon Sawa

This is the best book I’ve ever read. https://t.co/AUJLuRAadm [source]

Meg Rosoff

A book that explores that whole subject of finding out where you belong in the world, which is not a search that starts and ends between 18 and 21. [source]

4

American Dirt

Jeanine Cummins

4.8

También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams.

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they’ll

Recommended by Bryony Gordon and Jonny Geller.

Bryony Gordon

Everyone must read this book by @jeaninecummins. I cannot stop talking about it. I want to immediately start reading it all over again. Utterly magnificent. https://t.co/f3HHqddskD [source]

Jonny Geller

Think this the best (non Curtis Brown) book I read last year. https://t.co/NjKExF5dZ8 [source]

5

Pedro Páramo

Juan Rulfo, Margaret Sayers Peden, Susan Sontag

4.7

A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village.

As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer.

Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions,

6

The Hummingbird's Daughter

Luis Alberto Urrea

4.7

The prizewinning writer Luis Alberto Urrea's long-awaited novel is an epic mystical drama of a young woman's sudden sainthood in late 19th-century Mexico.

It is 1889, and the civil war is brewing in Mexico. Sixteen year old Teresita, illegitimate but beloved daughter of the wealthy and powerful rancher Don Tomas Urrea, wakes from the strangest dream - a dream that she has died. Only it was not a dr

Recommended by Rupert Isaacson.

Rupert Isaacson

Some things, particularly neuro-psychiatric stuff, is better addressed through shamanism. We can contain it with drugs but we certainly don’t have a way of making it a positive thing. [source]

7

The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings

Octavio Paz

4.7

Octavio Paz has long been acknowledged as Mexico's foremost writer and critic. In this international classic, Paz has written one of the most enduring and powerful works ever created on Mexico and its people, character, and culture. Compared to Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses for its trenchant analysis, this collection contains his most famous work, "The Labyrinth of Solitude," a beauti

8

The Lacuna

Barbara Kingsolver

4.7

In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coasta

9

Esperanza Rising

Pam Muñoz Ryan

4.6

Esperanza thought she'd always live with her family on their ranch in Mexico--she'd always have fancy dresses, a beautiful home, and servants. But a sudden tragedy forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California during the Great Depression, and to settle in a camp for Mexican farm workers. Esperanza isn't ready for the hard labor, financial struggles, or lack of acceptance she now faces. When thei

10

Signs Preceding the End of the World

Yuri Herrera, Lisa Dillman

4.6

Winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction

Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one co

Cover unavailable

11

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Cormac McCarthy

4.5

An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indi

Recommended by Jocko Willink, Aleksandar Hemon, Bryan Callen, and 3 others.

Jocko Willink

Founder/Echelon Front

The other book that I've read multiple times is Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. [source]

Aleksandar Hemon

It’s possibly the greatest American novel of the past 25 years. [source]

Bryan Callen

So here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and listen to Richard Poe narrate that. Those are two of the greatest feats of the english language that I can think of. Then there’s Fortress of Solitude, an amazing book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, these are great novels. Cold Mountain is a beautiful novel, Snow Falling On Cedars, I mean they’ve been around for a while. But goddamnit, get those under your belt. Those are the novels I think you should read. You know Love In The Time Of Cholera it just makes you ache. Kind of like a Hemingway thing, where Hemingway “ahh!”, it’s the same thing, you know. So I don’t know, I’m a fan of all those books. Those are my 3 slash 20 books. [source]

12

The Pearl

John Steinbeck

4.5

Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull’s egg, as “perfect as the moon.” With the pearl comes hope, the promise of co

13

Gods of Jade and Shadow

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

4.5

The Mayan God of Death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this dark fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore, for readers of The Song of Achilles and Uprooted.

Here we shall begin to tell a story: a tale of a throne lost, of monsters and magic. A tale of gods and of the shadow realm. But this, our story, it begins in our world, in the land of mortals.

It begins with a woman.

14

The Power of the Dog

Don Winslow

4.5

An explosive novel of the drug trade, The Power of the Dog takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge.

Art Keller is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker. Father Parada is a powerful and incorruptible Catholic priest. Callan is an Irish kid from Hell’s kitche

Recommended by Devon Sawa.

Devon Sawa

“Savages” has knocked out “Power Of The Dog” for my new favorite @donwinslow book. It’s so damn good. Haven’t read “Frankie Machine” yet,though. Like I did with king’s “STAND”, I’m waiting, cause once I’ve read it, I’ve read it and it’s gone. Saving it for the beaches of Vietnam. [source]

15

Power and the Glory (Reprint)

Graham Greene

4.5

In a poor, remote section of southern Mexico, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest strives to overcome physical and moral cowardice in order to find redemption.
Introduction by John Updike

Recommended by Barack Obama.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, these titles are among his most influential forever favorites: Moby Dick, Herman Melville Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch Gilead, Marylinne Robinson Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene The Quiet American, Graham Greene Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Gandhi’s autobiography Working, Studs Terkel Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren [source]

16

Las batallas en el desierto

Jose Emilio Pacheco

4.5

Historia de un amor imposible, narración de un terror cotidiano que los protagonistas preferirían creer que se trata de algo fantasmagórico, Las batallas en el desierto es una magistral novela breve que involucra otros aspectos como la corrupción social y política, el inicio del México moderno y la desaparición del país tradicional, el testimonio de las transformaciones de nuestras vidas y nuestra

17

Under the Volcano

Malcolm Lowry

4.5

"Lowry's masterpiece...has a claim to being regarded as one of the ten most consequential works of fiction produced in [the twentieth] century." — Los Angeles Times

Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. His debilitating malaise is drinking, an activity that has overshadowed his life. On the most fateful day of the consul's life—the Day of the Dead—his wife, Yvon

Recommended by Hugh Thomson, Robin Robertson, Robin Robertson, and 1 others.

Hugh Thomson

There was a syndrome in the 1920s and 30s of British writers writing about Mexico – Lawrence, Waugh, Huxley, Greene. But Malcolm Lowry was one of the few English writers who actually spent quite a lot of time in the country. Graham Greene was only there for five weeks or so before writing his novel, but Lowry got under the skin of Mexico in a way that few of his contemporaries did. [source]

Robin Robertson

An incredibly moving cautionary tale. [source]

Robin Robertson

An incredibly moving cautionary tale. [source]

18

El llano en llamas

Juan Rulfo

4.5

'The Burning Plain and Other Stories consists of fifteen pieces ranging from brief anecdotes, casual incidents that remind one of 'happenings' in pop art to short stories. Many, indeed, are short-short stories in deceptively elemental language and narrative technique; yet all have a sharp impact on the reader.... With a few bare phrases the author conveys a feeling for the bleak, harsh surrounding

19

2666 (2666 #1-5)

Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer

4.5

Three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; a police detective in love with an elusive older woman—these are among the searchers drawn to the border city of Santa Teresa, where over the course of a decade hundreds of women have disappeared.

Recommended by John King.

John King

I have read this once and I keep dipping back into it because it is endlessly fascinating. Roberto Bolaño is a writer who has found a really important way of dealing with the horrors that the 1970s and subsequent decades have inflicted on Latin America. If you look at Borges, García Márquez and Vargas Llosa, in a sense they grew up in times of optimism, of high modernism, with the hope, at least initially, that change might be possible. Whereas someone like Bolaño was a young man at the time of the Chilean coup in 1973. He drifted around and went into exile in Mexico and then moved to Spain, a witness to the end of the dream. [source]

20

The Death of Artemio Cruz

Carlos Fuentes, Alfred MacAdam

4.4

Hailed as a masterpiece since its publication in 1962, The Death of Artemio Cruz is Carlos Fuentes's haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico. Its acknowledged place in Latin American fiction and its appeal to a fresh generation of readers have warranted this new translation by Alfred Mac Adam, translator (with the author) of Fuentes's Christopher Unborn.

As in all his fiction, but perhaps mo

21

The Savage Detectives

Roberto Bolano, Eddie Lopez, Armando Duran

4.4

The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolano has been called the Garcia Marquez of his generation. In this dazzling novel, the book that established his international reputation, Bolano tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes--the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself--on a tragicomic quest through a darkening, entropic universe. Brilliantly rendered into En

22

The Devil's Highway: A True Story

Luis Alberto Urrea

4.4

The author of "Across the Wire" offers brilliant investigative reporting of what went wrong when, in May 2001, a group of 26 men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona. Only 12 men came back out.

Cover unavailable

23

The Murmur of Bees

Sofía Segovia

4.4

From a beguiling voice in Mexican fiction comes an astonishing novel—her first to be translated into English—about a mysterious child with the power to change a family’s history in a country on the verge of revolution.

From the day that old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a bridge, the life of a small Mexican town forever changed. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio

24

Temporada de huracanes

Fernanda Melchor

4.4

Con un ritmo y un lenguaje magistrales, Fernanda Melchor, autora de Falsa liebre explora en esta obra las sinrazones que subyacen a los actos más desesperados de barbarie pasional.

Una novela cruda y desgarradora en la que el lector quedará envuelto, atrapado por las palabras y la atmósfera de terrible, aunque gozosa, fatalidad.

Un grupo de niños encuentra un cadáver flotando en las aguas turbias de

25

Rain of Gold

Villasenor

4.4

In Rain of Gold, Victor Villasenor weaves the parallel stories of two families and two countries…bringing us the timeless romance between the volatile bootlegger who would become his father and the beautiful Lupe, his mother–men and women in whose lives the real and the fantastical exist side by side…and in whose hearts the spirit to survive is fueled by a family’s unconditional love.

Recommended by Cecile Richards.

Cecile Richards

This has been a favourite of mine for a while, but it’s definitely off the radar of most people so I also want to highlight it for people who don’t know about it. I think it’s a great book. It’s kind of a semi-autobiographical novel but it’s basically about the migration of Mexican families to the US, families that get to California. [source]

26

The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches from the Border

Francisco Cantú

4.3

For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Haunted by the landscape of his youth, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners are posted to remote regions crisscrossed by drug routes and smuggling corridors, where they learn to track other humans under blistering sun and throu

27

Into the Beautiful North

Luis Alberto Urrea

4.3

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the United States to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village--they've all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men--her own

Cover unavailable

28

The Underdogs

Mariano Azuela, Sergio Waisman, Carlos Fuentes

4.3

The greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution, in a brilliant new translation by an award-winning translator

The Underdogs is the first great novel about the first great revolution of the twentieth century. Demetrio Macias, a poor, illiterate Indian, must join the rebels to save his family. Courageous and charismatic, he earns a generalship in Pancho Villa's army, only to become discouraged with the

Recommended by Hugh Thomson.

Hugh Thomson

I first read this when I was 16 or 17 and it made a strong impression on me. It’s a tough, picaresque novel of the Mexican revolution and of what it was like for the soldiers in the north. It’s a good account of how anarchic that revolution must have been and it still has a lot of verve and power, with images of troops spilling out of the trains, the Dorados, the ‘golden ones’, Pancho Villa’s cavalry. Pancho Villa 1878-1923 was the colourful bandit-hero of the Mexican revolution. [source]

29

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

Erika L. Sánchez

4.3

Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents’ house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family.

But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role.

Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family.

Cover unavailable

30

Aztec (Aztec, #1)

Gary Jennings

4.3

Aztec is the extraordinary story of the last and greatest native civilization of North America. Told in the words of one of the most robust and memorable characters in modern fiction, Mixtli-Dark Cloud, Aztec reveals the very depths of Aztec civilization from the peak and feather-banner splendor of the Aztec Capital of Tenochtitlan to the arrival of Hernán Cortes and his conquistadores, and their

31

The House of Broken Angels

Luis Alberto Urrea

4.3

The definitive Mexican-American immigrant story, a sprawling and deeply felt portrait of a Mexican-American family occasioned by the impending loss of its patriarch, from one of the country's most beloved authors.

Prizewinning and bestselling writer Luis Urrea has written his Mexican coming-to-America story and his masterpiece. Destined to sit alongside other classic immigrant novels, The House of

32

The Cartel (Power of the Dog #2)

Don Winslow

4.3

From the internationally best-selling author of the acclaimed novel The Power of the Dog comes The Cartel, a gripping, true-to-life, ripped-from-the-headlines epic story of power, corruption, revenge, and justice spanning the past decade of the Mexican-American drug wars.

It’s 2004. DEA agent Art Keller has been fighting the war on drugs for thirty years in a blood feud against Adán Barrera, the he

33

Aura

Carlos Fuentes

4.3

Felipe Montero is employed in the house of an aged widow to edit her deceased husband's memoirs. There Felipe meets her beautiful green-eyed niece, Aura. His passion for Aura and his gradual discovery of the true relationship between the young woman and her aunt propel the story to its extraordinary conclusion.

Recommended by Oscar Hijuelos.

Oscar Hijuelos

This book is an über-homage to Edgar Allan Poe and Jorge Luis Borges. It is a gothic piece. It’s a horror, a mystery, a Borgesian sleight of hand. Once you have read it, the effect changes and you become admiring of its technique. But on first reading it is a wonderfully surprising story, with a denouement which in retrospect is predictable but is enchanting. [source]

34

Caramelo

Sandra Cisneros

4.3

Every year, Ceyala "Lala" Reyes' family--aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, and Lala's six older brothers--packs up three cars and, in a wild ride, drive from Chicago to the Little Grandfather and Awful Grandmother's house in Mexico City for the summer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothers and to understand her place on this side of the border and that, Lala is a shrewd observer

35

Prayers for the Stolen

Jennifer Clement

4.3

A haunting story of love and survival that introduces an unforgettable literary heroine

Ladydi Garcia Martínez is fierce, funny and smart. She was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women must fend for themselves, as their men have left to seek opportunities elsewhere. Here in the shadow of the drug war, bodies turn up on the outskirts o

36

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Carlos Castaneda

4.3

Decades ago the University of California Press published a remarkable manuscript by an anthropology student named Carlos Castaneda. The Teachings of Don Juan initiated a generation of seekers dissatisfied with the limitations of the Western worldview. Castaneda's now classic book remains controversial for the alternative way of seeing that it presents & the revolution in cognition it demands. In a

Recommended by Aubrey Marcus.

37

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

Hayden Herrera

4.3

"Through her art, Herrera writes, Kahlo made of herself both performer and icon. Through this long overdue biography, Kahlo has also, finally, been made fully human." — San Francisco Chronicle

Hailed by readers and critics across the country, this engrossing biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo reveals a woman of extreme magnetism and originality, an artist whose sensual vibrancy came straight

38

The Story of My Teeth

Valeria Luiselli

4.3

I was born in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City, with four premature teeth and my body completely covered in a very fine coat of fuzz. But I'm grateful for that inauspicious start because ugliness, as my other uncle, Eurípides López Sánchez, was given to saying, is character forming.

Highway is a late-in-life world traveler, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneer. His most precious posse

39

The House of the Scorpion (Matteo Alacran, #1)

Nancy Farmer

4.3

With undertones of vampires, Frankenstein, dragons' hoards, and killing fields, Matt's story turns out to be an inspiring tale of friendship, survival, hope, and transcendence. A must-read for teenage fantasy fans.

At his coming-of-age party, Matteo Alacrán asks El Patrón's bodyguard, "How old am I?...I know I don't have a birthday like humans, but I was born."

"You were harvested," Tam Lin reminds

Cover unavailable

40

The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico

Miguel Leon-Portilla, Lysander Kemp, et al.

4.2

Until 1959, when this book was published for the first time, the only organized testimony about the Conquest was the victorious chronicle of the Spaniards themselves. Miguel León-Portilla had the incomparable success of organizing texts translated from Nahuatl by Ángel María Garibay Kintana to give us the The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico: Indigenous people of Tenochtitlán, Tlatelolco, T

41

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

4.2

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them

Recommended by Adam Conover, Colin Calloway, and Scott Keyes.

Adam Conover

@TheBaltimoreSon @CharlesCMann Sure it! A total revolution in my understanding of history, all in one book. Amazing stuff. [source]

Colin Calloway

The book provides a huge hemispheric overview. [source]

Scott Keyes

It’s one of those books that takes everything you thought you knew about the history of European colonialists and indigenous groups in the Americas and turns it on its head. Just a fascinating deep-dive into early American history that questions a lot of dogma we were taught in school. [source]

42

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions

Valeria Luiselli

4.2

Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin-American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction of the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants with the reality of racism and fear both here and back home."

43

Mexico

James A. Michener and Steve Berry

4.2

Pulitzer Prize–winning author James A. Michener, whose novels hurtle from the far reaches of history to the dark corners of the world, paints an intoxicating portrait of a land whose past and present are as turbulent, fascinating, and colorful as any other on Earth. When an American journalist travels to report on the upcoming duel between two great matadors, he is ultimately swept up in the drama

44

Los ingrávidos

Valeria Luiselli

4.2

¿Cuántas vidas y cuántas muertes son posibles en la existencia de una misma persona? Los ingrávidos es una novela sobre existencias fantasmales; una evocación, a la vez melancólica y llena de humor, sobre la imposibilidad del encuentro amoroso y el carácter irrevocable de la perdida. Se lee con la emoción trepidante que genera una escritura ágil, aguda, a ratos francamente iluminada, pero que no r

45

The Distance Between Us

Reyna Grande

4.2

From an award-winning novelist and sought-after public speaker, an eye-opening memoir about life before and after illegally emigrating from Mexico to the United States.

Mago pointed to a spot on the dirt floor and reminded me that my umbilical cord was buried there. “That way,” Mami told the midwife, “no matter where life takes her, she won’t ever forget where she came from.”

Then Mago touched my b

46

Balún Canán

Rosario Castellanos

4.2

47

Lost Children Archive

Valeria Luiselli

4.2

From the two-time NBCC Finalist, an emotionally resonant, fiercely imaginative new novel about a family whose road trip across America collides with an immigration crisis at the southwestern border--an indelible journey told with breathtaking imagery, spare lyricism, and profound humanity.

A mother and father set out with their two children, a boy and a girl, driving from New York to Arizona in the

Recommended by Alfred A. Knopf.

Alfred A. Knopf

LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE by @ValeriaLuiselli “is a beautiful, heartbreaking book, one which is determined not to let these children be robbed of their innocence or their humanity, by a cruel bureaucracy laboring to make them feel unwelcome.” https://t.co/z2OHFL2KZu [source]

Cover unavailable

48

The Sound of Gravel

Ruth Wariner

4.2

A riveting, deeply affecting true story of one girl’s coming-of-age in a polygamist family.

RUTH WARINER was the thirty-ninth of her father’s forty-two children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turn a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked

49

On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey

Paul Theroux

4.2

Legendary travel writer Paul Theroux drives the entire length of the US–Mexico border, then goes deep into the hinterland, on the back roads of Chiapas and Oaxaca, to uncover the rich, layered world behind today’s brutal headlines.

Paul Theroux has spent his life crisscrossing the globe in search of the histories and peoples that give life to the places they call home. Now, as immigration debates

50

Noticias del Imperio

Fernando del Paso

4.2

Han pasado 60 años de la muerte del emperador Maximiliano de Habsburgo. Recluida en el Castillo de Bouchot y envuelta en la locura, Carlota rinde testimonio del tragico y efímero segundo Imperio Mexicano, del amor por su esposo fusilado y de un tiempo que no volverá. La voz de la emperatriz, desenfrenada, lucida y delirante, es reflejo de un mundo que desaparece y del que ella es el ultimo testigo

51

Fiesta en la madriguera

Juan Pablo Villalobo

4.2

A Tochtli le gustan los sombreros, los diccionarios, los samuráis, las guillotinas y los franceses. Pero Tochtli es un niño y ahora lo que quiere es un nuevo animal para su zoológico privado: un hipopótamo enano de Liberia. Su padre, Yolcaut, un narcotraficante en la cúspide del poder, está dispuesto a cumplir todos sus caprichos. No importa que se trate de un animal exótico en peligro de extinció

Cover unavailable

52

The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics

Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson

4.2

The Mexico Reader is a vivid introduction to muchos Méxicos—the many Mexicos, or the many varied histories and cultures that comprise contemporary Mexico. Unparalleled in scope and written for the traveler, student, and expert alike, the collection offers a comprehensive guide to the history and culture of Mexico—including its difficult, uneven modernization; the ways the country has been profound

53

Umami

Raquel Pelzel

4.2

54

The Ruins

Scott Smith

4.2

Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine. Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation–sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spiral

55

The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, #2)

Cormac McCarthy

4.2

Following All the Pretty Horses in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a novel whose force of language is matched only by its breadth of experience and depth of thought. In the bootheel of New Mexico hard on the frontier, Billy and Boyd Parham are just boys in the years before the Second World War, but on the cusp of unimaginable events. First comes a trespassing Indian and the dream of wolves run

56

Oaxaca Journal (Vintage)

Oliver Sacks

4.2

Since childhood, Oliver Sacks has been fascinated by ferns: an ancient class of plants able to survive and adapt in many climates. Along with a delightful group of fellow fern aficionados—mathematicians, poets, artists, and assorted botanists and birders—he embarks on an exploration of Southern Mexico, a region that is also rich in human history and culture. He muses on the origins of chocolate an

Recommended by Francine Mckenna.

Francine Mckenna

@JasonDewees @moorehn Beautiful photos in your book. Ferns are not palms but you may enjoy this book. I listened to it in one of my last drives from DC to Chicago for the Oaxaca angle. https://t.co/9CIPfU4ahE [source]

57

The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

Frida Kahlo

4.1

Published here in its entirety, Frida Kahlo's amazing illustrated journal documents the last ten years of her turbulent life. This passionate, often surprising, intimate record, kept under lock and key for some forty years in Mexico, reveals many new dimensions in the complex persona of this remarkable Mexican artist.

Covering the years 1944-45, the 170-page journal contains Frida's thoughts, poems

58

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

Sam Quinones

4.1

In fascinating detail, Sam Quinones chronicles how, over the past 15 years, enterprising sugar cane farmers in a small county on the west coast of Mexico created a unique distribution system that brought black tar heroin—the cheapest, most addictive form of the opiate, 2 to 3 times purer than its white powder cousin—to the veins of people across the United States. Communities where heroin had neve

Recommended by David Heinemeier Hansson.

David Heinemeier Hansson

Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic accounts how a few tiny studies on low rates of opium addiction for hospital patients lead to a whole new paradigm for treating pain in the US. From mid 90s to late 2000s, opium pain pills were basically considered non-addictive by much of the medical community. This led to crazy over-prescription, subsequent addiction, and a whole new market for heroin once someone was hooked and couldn’t afford the pills. This heroin market was served in large parts by on-demand delivery services driven by small-town Mexican heroin cells. It’s really an interesting tale of medical hubris, corporate greed, the devastation of whole areas to addiction, and more. It could have used a lot more editing, though. So many phrases, “black-tar heroin delivered like pizza”, just keep repeating over and over again. But it’s a solid recount of how we got to this tragic point that opium overdoses is now a leading cause of death for many demographic groups in the US. More people die from drug overdoses than from car crashes now. Tragic. [source]

59

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy

4.1

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones.

One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss t

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60

Mexico Biography of Power

Enrique Krauze

4.1

The concentration of power in the caudillo (leader) is as much a formative element of Mexican culture and politics as the historical legacy of the Aztec emperors, Cortez, the Spanish Crown, the Mother Church and the mixing of the Spanish and Indian population into a mestizo culture. Krauze shows how history becomes biography during the century of caudillos from the insurgent priests in 1810 to Por

61

El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

Ioan Grillo

4.1

The world has watched stunned at the bloodshed in Mexico. Thirty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high. Or is it? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters and drug agents at

62

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Mrs. Pollifax, #1)

Dorothy Gilman

4.1

Mrs. Virgil (Emily) Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, was a widow with grown children. She was tired of attending her Garden Club meetings. She wanted to do something good for her country. So, naturally, she became a CIA agent. This time, the assignment sounds as tasty as a taco. A quick trip to Mexico City is on her agenda. Unfortunately, something goes wrong, and our dear Mrs. Pollifax find

Cover unavailable

63

The Conquest Of Mexico

Hugh Thomas

4.1

Hugh Thomas' account of the collapse of Montezuma's great Aztec empire under the onslaughts of Cortes' conquistadors is one of the great historical works of our times. A thrilling and sweeping narrative, it also bristles with moral and political issues. After setting out from Spain - against explicit instructions - in 1519, some 500 conquistadors destroyed their ships and fought their way towards

Recommended by Hugh Thomson.

Hugh Thomson

This came out just at the time that I was making a film in Mexico and following the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes’s route from Veracruz to Mexico City (as it is now – then it was Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital). Cortes reached Tenochtitlán in 1519. I used this book as my bible for retracing his route. Thomas makes clear what an achievement it was, first to dismantle his boats when he arrived and then to advance into this huge and powerful empire, knowing that the Aztecs practised human sacrifice. I mean, whatever you think of the Spaniards and the Conquest, they were undeniably brave. Thomas is good at using Aztec sources, chronicles and stories to show how it seemed from their side. [source]

64

On Mexican Time: A New Life In San Miguel

Tony Cohan

4.1

When Tony Cohan and his wife visited central Mexico in 1985, they fell under the spell of an irresistible place. Recounting his awakening to needs he didn't know he had, Cohan tells how they returned to California, sold their house, and cast off for a new life in San Miguel de Allende.

Cover unavailable

65

Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

Buddy Levy

4.1

66

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros

4.1

Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero.

Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous–it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing fo

Recommended by Craig Miller.

Craig Miller

For those asking, I actually read two books in February. "The House on Mango Street" is one of the most interestingly written books I've ever digested--a beautiful work. And I loved the Shatner book because I love Shatner. #newyearsresolutionstillgoingstrong https://t.co/4TVPbjJAEJ [source]

67

Arráncame la vida

Angeles Mastretta

4.1

En el México postrevolucionario de los años treinta y cuarenta todo parece suceder como en un vértigo, y para Catalina, protagonista y narradora, escenas y emociones se consumen en el aire con la radiante velocidad de un fósforo.
Ambición, matrimonio, adulterio, sacrificio y venganza; la historia amorosa de la temperamental y apasionada Catalina Ascencio...

68

La región más transparente

Fuentes Carlos

4.1

Fue la primera novela de Fuentes, la que le abrió todas las puertas posibles. Inventario de la sociedad mexicana, es también una suerte de versión vanguardista de la Comedia Humana, en la que, a través de un curioso mapa de linajes, se representan mundos y submundos entrelazados. La ciudad de México emerge en su moderna complejidad, y la escritura nos proporciona una cartografía de la red social q

69

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

Vincent Bevins

4.1

A hidden history of CIA activities in Indonesia and Latin America---no less violent or consequential than other, prominent Cold War disasters, but widely overlooked for one important reason: here the CIA was successful.

During the Cold War, the U.S. effort to contain communism resulted in several disgraceful and disastrous conflicts: Vietnam, Cuba, Korea. But other conflicts in Indonesia, Brazil,

70

Becoming Naomi León

Pam Munoz Ryan, Pam Muñoz Ryan

4.1

When Naomi's absent mother resurfaces to claim her, Naomi runs away to Oaxaca, Mexico with her great-grandmother and younger brother in search of her father.

71

Queen of the South

Arturo Perez-Reverte

4.1

Alternate cover edition can be found here.

Teresa Mendoza's boyfriend is a drug smuggler who the narcos of Sinaloa, Mexico, call "the king of the short runway," because he can get a plane full of coke off the ground in three hundred yards. But in a ruthless business, life can be short, and Teresa even has a special cell phone that Guero gave her along with a dark warning. If that phone rings, it me

72

Cities of the Plain (The Border Trilogy, #3)

Cormac McCarthy

4.1

The concluding volume of the Border trilogy. In this magnificent new novel, the National Book Award-winning author of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing fashions a darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier. It is 1952 and John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands in New Mexico, not far from the proving grounds of Alamogordo and the cities of El Paso and Juarez. Their l

Cover unavailable

73

God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

Richard Grant

4.1

From the acclaimed author of Dispatches From Pluto and Deepest South of All, a harrowing travelogue into Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre mountains.

Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of

74

Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras

Duncan Tonatiuh

4.1

A picture book biography of José Guadalupe (Lupe) Posada (1852–1913). In a country that was not known for freedom of speech, he first drew political cartoons, much to the amusement of the local population but not the politicians. He continued to draw cartoons throughout much of his life, but he is best known today for his calavera drawings. They have become synonymous with Mexico’s Día de los Muer

75

The Conquest of New Spain

Bernal Diaz Del Castillo

4.1

Vivid and absorbing, this is a first-person account of one of the most startling military episodes in history: the overthrow of Montezuma’s Aztec empire by the ruthless Hernan Cortes and his band of adventurers. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, himself a soldier under Cortes, presents a fascinatingly detailed description of the Spanish landing in Mexico in 1520, their amazement at the city, the exploitat

76

Dreamers

Yuyi Morales

4.1

Yuyi Morales tells her own immigration story in this picture-book tribute to the transformative power of hope . . . and reading.

In 1994, Yuyi Morales left her home in Xalapa, Mexico and came to the US with her infant son. She left behind nearly everything she owned, but she didn't come empty-handed.

She brought her strength, her work, her passion, her hopes and dreams...and her stories.

77

Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century

Daniel Hernandez

4.0

MEXICO CITY, with some 20 million inhabitants, is the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. Enormous growth, raging crime, and tumultuous politics have also made it one of the most feared and misunderstood. Yet in the past decade, the city has become a hot spot for international business, fashion, and art, and a magnet for thrill-seeking expats from around the world.

In 2002, Daniel Hernandez tr

78

El libro de los americanos desconocidos

Cristina Henríquez

4.0

Dos familias cuyas esperanzas chocan con el destino. Y una extraordinaria novela que nos ofrece una poderosa y nueva definición de lo que significa ser americano.
Arturo y Alma Rivera han vivido toda la vida en México. Un día, Maribel, la hija a la que tanto quieren, sufre un grave accidente y la probabilidad de que se recupere completamente es poca. Dejando todo atrás, los Rivera emigran a los Est

79

Enrique's Journey

Sonia Nazario

4.0

A true story from award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounting the odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States.

In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States.

When Enrique is five y

80

Los señores del narco

Anabel Hernandez

4.0

Los señores del narco es una descarnada crónica sobre las alarmantes complicidades de los altos círculos políticos, policiacos, militares y empresariales con el crimen organizado. Anabel Hernández tuvo acceso no sólo a una vasta documentación, inédita hasta hoy, sino a testimonios directos de autoridades y expertos en el tema, así como de personas involucradas con los principales cárteles mexicano

81

Los recuerdos del porvenir

Elena Garro

4.0

Los recuerdos del porvenir es la historia coral del pueblo de Ixtepec, en alguna llanura cerca de México. Allí, los habitantes hace años que viven encerrados en un tiempo inmóvil. Ixtepec vivió tiempos mejores, pero con la presencia de los militares y del General Francisco Rosas, sus calles andan estancadas entre el tedio y la sangre. En una de las calles principales del pueblo residen los Moncada

82

The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail

Oscar Martinez, Daniela Maria Ugaz, John Washington, Francisco Goldman

4.0

One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories

83

Beauty Salon

Mario Bellatin, Kurt Hollander

4.0

"Like much of Mr. Bellatin’s work, Beauty Salon is pithy, allegorical and profoundly disturbing, with a plot that evokes The Plague by Camus or Blindness by José Saramago."--New York Times

"Including a few details that may linger uncomfortably with the reader for a long time, this is contemporary naturalism as disturbing as it gets."--Booklist

A strange plague appears in a large city. Rejected by fa

Cover unavailable

84

Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent into Darkness

Alfredo Corchado

4.0

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

85

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

Nathaniel Philbrick

4.0

"With its huge, scarred head halfway out of the water and its tail beating the ocean into a white-water wake more than forty feet across, the whale approached the ship at twice its original speed - at least six knots. With a tremendous cracking and splintering of oak, it struck the ship just beneath the anchor secured at the cat-head on the port bow..."

In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life t

Recommended by Richard Branson and Ryan Holiday.

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

Wow, did you know that Moby Dick was based on a true story? There was a real whaling ship that was broken in half by an angry sperm whale. But it gets even more insane. The members of the crew escaped in three lifeboats, traveling thousands of miles at sea with little food and water until they slowly resorted to cannibalism(!) Besides being an utterly unbelievable story, this book also gives a great history into the whaling industry and the cowboys/entrepreneurs who led it. Definitely recommend and I promise my spoilers did not ruin anything. [source]

Cover unavailable

86

The Great Book of Mexico: Interesting Stories, Mexican History & Random Facts About Mexico (History & Fun Facts)

Bill O'Neill

4.0

87

Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields

Charles Bowden

4.0

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad.

In Murder City, Charles Bowden-one of the few journalists who spent extended periods of time in Juarez-has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegra

Recommended by Johann Hari.

Johann Hari

It’s a study of Ciudad Juarez, a city in northern Mexico, on the border with the United States. At the time Charles Bowden was there, it was the deadliest city in the world. [source]

88

An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya

Mary Ellen Miller

4.0

The myths and beliefs of the great Precolumbian civilizations of Mesoamerica have baffled and fascinated outsiders ever since the Spanish Conquest. Yet, until now, no single-volume introduction has existed to act as a guide to this labyrinthine symbolic world. In The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya nearly 300 entries, from accession to yoke, describe the main gods and symbols of th

89

Here's to You, Jesusa!

Elena Poniatowska

4.0

Jesusa is a tough, fiery character based on a real working-class Mexican woman whose life spanned some of the seminal events of early twentieth-century Mexican history. Having joined a cavalry unit during the Mexican Revolution, she finds herself at the Revolution's end in Mexico City, far from her native Oaxaca, abandoned by her husband and working menial jobs. So begins Jesusa's long history of

90

Signal to Noise

Silvia Moreno-Garci

4.0

Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

A literary fantasy about love, music and sorcery, set against the background of Mexico City.

Mexico City, 1988: Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said “I love you” with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, has two equally unhip friends -- Sebastian and Daniela -- and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers ho

91

Stones for Ibarra

Harriet Doerr

4.0

Richard and Sara Everton, just over and just under forty, have come to the small Mexican village of Ibarra to reopen a copper mine abandoned by Richard's grandfather fifty years before. They have mortgaged, sold, borrowed, left friends and country, to settle in this remote spot; their plan is to live out their lives here, connected to the place and to each other.
The two Americans, the only forei

92

La conquista de México

Sofía Guadarrama

4.0

El 8 de noviembre de 1519 Hernán Cortés entró por primera vez a la ciudad isla de México Tenochtitlan en compañía de 450 europeos y aproximadamente 6,000 soldados tlaxcaltecas, cholultecas, huexotzincas y totonacas.

A 500 años del suceso que cambió por completo la historia del imperio mexica y todo el continente americano, Sofía Guadarrama Collado entrega al lector La Conquista de México, la versió

93

Persona normal

Benito Taibo

4.0

Una grandiosa e increíble aventura para ser todo... excepto normal.

Tenía un par de padres divertidos y jóvenes, llenos de sueños y de planes. Pero a mis doce años, cinco meses, tres días y dos horas y cuarto, aproximadamente, me quedé sin ellos

Desde que el tío Paco se hizo cargo de él, Sebastián ha vivido aventuras increíbles: tuvo un encuentro inesperado con un enorme felino, conoció a uno de los

94

Mexico: Travel for kids: The fun way to discover Mexico

Dinobibi Publishing, Belinda Briggs, et al.

4.0

95

Te vendo un perro

Juan Pablo Villalobos

4.0

Long before he was the taco seller whose "Gringo Dog" recipe made him famous throughout Mexico City, our hero was an aspiring artist: an artist, that is, till his would-be girlfriend was stolen by Diego Rivera, and his dreams snuffed out by his hypochondriac mother. Now our hero lives in a retirement home, where fending off boredom is far more grueling than making tacos. Plagued by the literary sa

96

México engañado [Mexico Cheated]

Francisco Martín Moreno

4.0

97

A Visit to Don Otavio

Sybille Bedford

4.0

Before returning to the Old World after World War II, Sybille Bedford resolved to see something more of the New. I had a great longing to move, she said, to hear another language, eat new food, to be in a country with a long nasty history in the past and as little present history as possible. And so she set out for Mexico--and, incidentally, to write what Bruce Chatwin called the best travel book

Cover unavailable

98

Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/O Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

Robert Chao Romero

4.0

Interest in and awareness of the demand for social justice as an outworking of the Christian faith is growing. But it is not new. For five hundred years, the Latina/o culture and identity has been shaped by its challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in its opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American dictatorships, US imperialism in Central America, the

99

Las muertas

Ibarguengoitia

4.0

Si al despertarse, Simón Corona se hubiera vuelto a su casa, los crímenes de Las Poquianchis habrían permanecido ocultos. Pero el destino tenía escrita otra historia. El reencuentro con Serafina Baladro, su amante, le costará a Simón Corona cuarenta y ocho balas de calibre reglamentario, y aún así se librará de la muerte. Pero también le valdrá una confesión ante el inspector Teódulo Cueto: una ve

100

Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya

William Carlsen

4.0

New York Times Bestseller (Expeditions)

“Thrilling. … A captivating history of two men who dramatically changed their contemporaries’ view of the past.” — Kirkus (starred review)

"[An] adventure tale that make[s] Indiana Jones seem tame.” — Library Journal

In 1839, rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world’s most in