North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States; Updated by Matt S. Meier

After more than fifty years this is still the best study of the US-Mexico border region. It is THE foundational work - covering history, culture and politics of the border in a vivid and unforgettable way. Carey McWilliams was a wonderful writer and storyteller and had an encyclopedic understanding of the history of the Spanish in the Southwest, the US expansion into the region, and the long and tragic history of the later Mexican migration back into the border States. The book is as fresh today as if written this year, and it is more important than ever as the US will once again take up immigration reform. The book is a must-read, not just as a textbook, but for everyone interested in really understanding the history of our relations with Mexico.

I really take issue with the dismissive review of the reader from Washington, I think they missed the point. This book was written in the late 40's as a response to the Zootsuit murders which brought to the attention of the American people the marginalized situation of Chicano people. McWilliams pieced together the little that was known about the history of the settlement of the southwest by Spanish subjects who were mainly people of mixed descent in order to establish that these people were not "immigrants" but rather more native to the land than the Anglo population. The mixture of history, sociology, and news was ahead of its time, making it accessible to people from different backgrounds. I think it was a wonderful example of the gritty style of American writers that has been lost in our times where passion has no place in the public sphere.

I first read McWilliams book in the 1960s. It put into persepective the contribution of my heritage and explained how my family's origins differed from the expanse of "Hispanics" that came later to populate various aspects of the United States.McWilliams understood the contribution and the resulting plight early on, before the Civil Rights movement, before Ceasar Chavez. McWillaims did us all a favor by not becoming the outside spokesman for what developed as a cause that he understood and elequently outlined in history and in ethic.