New Books in Mexican Studies

New Books Network
  • 4.4 (10)
  • History

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork

  1. 1d ago

    Bernardo de Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution with Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia (UNC Press, 2026)

    Although Spain was never a formal ally of the United States during the American Revolution, its entry into the war definitively tipped the balance against Britain. Led by Bernardo de Gálvez, supreme commander of the Spanish forces in North America, their military campaigns against British settlements on the Mississippi River—and later against Mobile and Pensacola—were crucial in preventing Britain from concentrating all its North American military and naval forces on the fight against George Washington’s Continental army. In this first comprehensive biography of Gálvez (1746–86) Bernardo de Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution (UNC Press, 2026), Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia assesses the commander’s considerable historical impact and expands our understanding of Spain’s contribution to the war.A man of both empire and the Enlightenment, as viceroy of New Spain (1785–86), Gálvez was also pivotal in the design and implementation of Spanish colonial reforms, which included the reorganization of Spain’s Northern Frontier that brought peace to the region for the duration of the Spanish presence in North America. Extensively researched through Spanish, Mexican, and US archives, Quintero Saravia’s portrait of Gálvez reveals him as central to the histories of the Revolution and late eighteenth-century America and offers a reinterpretation of the international factors involved in the American War for Independence. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 5d ago

    The Quake That Drained the Desert with Mary Elizabeth Reynolds (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

    On May 3, 1887, an earthquake struck near the U.S.-Mexico border. Forty-three people died in Bavispe, Mexico; sixty miles north in Arizona, buildings swayed and a few collapsed, but no one was killed. Today, every person in southern Arizona lives with the underground aftermath of this earthquake: a drained aquifer.  The estimated 7.4 magnitude earthquake created a sixty-two-mile rupture, the longest known surface rupture by a normal fault. The Quake That Drained the Desert (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Mary Elizabeth Reynolds tells the story of the men who investigated the earthquake: a doctor and photographer from Tombstone and an engineer from Mexico. Reynolds retells the terror of the survivors while exploring the ways the earthquake continues to shape water use and legacies in the greater Southwest.  In this rigorous and gripping narrative, Reynolds unearths the aftermath of the quake, showing how it dramatically altered aquifers in southern Arizona and changed rivers that ensured the prosperity of two Mormon communities in southern Arizona and Mexico. With an eye to the present, this book asks us to consider how this underexamined quake marked the beginning of the water crisis in the region today, compacted by a century of groundwater pumping for agriculture, mining, and urban uses. As local governments and nonprofit organizations on both sides of the border now work to restore streams for wildlife habitat and flood control, they also hope to preserve water supplies for future generations.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. Sep 13

    Ulices Piña, "Rebellious Citizens: Social Upheaval and Democracy in Revolutionary Mexico (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

    In Rebellious Citizens: Social Upheaval and Democracy in Revolutionary Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2026), Ulices Piña shows that democracy in Mexico has never been the exclusive domain of elites, nor confined to the ballot box. Focusing on the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20, Piña explores how citizens forged a substantive democratic culture in the crucible of three successive social upheavals that shook the established social order in the central western state of Jalisco during the 1920s and 1930s—a formative period in the nation’s political history. Piña examines how ordinary Mexicans actively shaped the political process, made their own history, and fought for equality in the country’s long fight for democracy. The long-term effects of the recurring uprisings in Jalisco were central to the new political system produced by the postrevolutionary state: After each rebellion, authorities consolidated institutional power, elected officials debated the strictures of government, and ordinary people grappled with the promise and limits of political emancipation. Because of the contradictions that arose from the creation of this modern political system, especially those that emerged at the nexus of democratic inclusion and authoritarian rule, seemingly powerless populations claimed equality, exercised participation rights, and demanded respect, even amid the violence and surveillance the state deployed against marginal groups to achieve its goals. Rebellious Citizens brings into focus the struggles of ordinary people to experiment with new ways of doing politics to remake the nation. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Aug 23

    Tatiana Seijas, "American Metropolis: The Making of Mexico City" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    Mexico City was America's largest city in the seventeenth century – a genuine metropolis. In American Metropolis: The Making of Mexico City (Cambridge University Press, 2026), Dr. Tatiana Seijas reveals a rich tapestry of stories about essential workers who remade and transformed the city during this period. Her narrative style carries readers to a unique place and time with residents from around the world who sold food, facilitated transportation, provided care, and valued the city's silver. Free and enslaved people from Africa and Asia, immigrants, and Native Americans pursued opportunities in a wealthy, yet deeply unequal environment, where working people claimed parts of the city for themselves. They carved out spaces to create new businesses and protect their livelihoods, altering the cityscape itself in the process. American Metropolis brings Mexico City to life from the perspective of the working people who transformed this early modern metropolis. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Jul 19

    Gabriella Soto, "Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

    Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting (University of Arizona Press, 2026) begins with the undocumented individuals who die crossing the U.S.-Mexico border—deaths that are both preventable and politically produced. Moving between the practical and the philosophical, forensic anthropologist and author Gabriella Soto asks what it means to care for the dead and what society owes to those who die in its name. Through the lens of haunting, she explores how the dead continue to shape the living, not as objects of horror but as moral agents whose presence demands justice. Centered primarily in Arizona and South Texas, Border Afterlives offers a border-scale comparative account of forensic practices, critiques the limits of “best practices” in under-resourced systems, and calls for a re-imagining of forensic humanitarianism grounded in reciprocity and dignity, beyond human rights. This is a book that insists on remembering the dead. In this conversation, we discuss the difficult interplay between federal immigration policy and local practices of death care on the border, the implications of policies that cause increased death tolls, the politics of humanitarian immigration reform, and, finally, how allowing ourselves to be haunted by the slow mass casualties of the border can and should inspire us to act. Gabriella Soto is a contemporary archaeologist who examines the material world to understand pressing social issues. Integrating ethnographic methods, GIS technology, and archival research, she specializes in migration materialities, focusing on Latinx migration and security at the US-Mexico border. Her work analyzes the material footprints of transit, forensic death investigations, and security and humanitarian infrastructure. An ACLS fellow whose work has also been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Soto is a research affiliate at the Binational Migration Institute and holds faculty affiliations at Arizona State University’s School of Transborder Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Forensics, and the Latinx Oral History Lab. Her research has appeared in American Anthropologist and Political Geography, and her article on migrant material culture won the American Anthropological Association’s Gordon R. Willey Paper Prize. Dr. Soto is the author of Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting (University of Arizona Press, 2026). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Jul 11

    Mary E. Mendoza, "Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border" (UNC Press, 2026)

    As many as ten thousand people attempt to illegally cross the border between the US and Mexico each month, braving deserts, rivers, and other environmental hazards in the process. But the very illegality of that crossing has an environmental history, writes Penn State University assistant professor Mary Mendoza in Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border (University of North Carolina Press, 2026). It was diseases, microbes, insects, and animals which, in part, hardened the border from a porous array of landscapes into the militarized zone seen on the news every night. However, despite the ecological and political difficulties of doing so, people continue to cross the border between the two countries, defying environmental odds and risking death along the way. In Deadly Divide, Mendoza explains why, underscores the risks involved, and shows how we got to this point, keeping an eye on the border region's stark landscape with every step of the way. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. May 10

    Rachel Grace Newman, "The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite" (U California Press, 2026)

    The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite (U California Press, 2026), by Dr. Rachel Grace Newman is a deep history of the politics of foreign education in Mexico, where many influential figures have degrees from European or US institutions. Reconstructing the history of student mobility from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Dr. Newman unveils the social hierarchies, political languages, and institutional mechanisms that created Mexico’s foreign-educated elite. Study abroad began as a private phenomenon for young elites to acquire specific forms of knowledge and to preserve their status. But after the 1910 revolution, elites gradually convinced the Mexican state, under the guise of modernizing the nation, to underwrite their ambitions with merit-based scholarships. Student mobility naturalized the expectation that Mexico’s sovereignty and development required knowledge from elsewhere. For historians of Mexico and other countries with foreign-educated elites, this open-access book reveals the subtle, insidious processes by which states reinforce privilege through education policy. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. May 2

    Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte, "In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025)

    In the mid-1930s the amateur French ethnographer and filmmaker Bernard de Colmont ventured into the mountainous state of Chiapas to study the Lacandón people and broadcast their way of life to a curious European public. Considered a “lost tribe,” the Lacandón were thought to be the closest living relatives of the ancient Maya. De Colmont became a celebrity explorer whose adventures generated considerable attention. The Lacandón themselves, however, were silenced in his tale. Nearly a century later, in In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025), Dr. Richard Ivan Jobs and Dr. Steven Van Wolputte have taken up this story in all its complexity, creating a graphic history from de Colmont’s narratives and images in the form of a heroic adventure comic. An essay contextualizing and historicizing the tale follows, as does an evocative, reflective poem by Tsotsil writer Manuel Bolom Pale, which offers an Indigenous perspective on the encounter. A captivating experiment in form, the book puts an immersive new spin on studying the past. In the Land of the Lacandón illuminates de Colmont’s expedition against the backdrop of late imperialism on the eve of the Second World War in Europe. It investigates the history of exploration, science, and media, revealing how these narratives represented and constructed Indigenous Peoples for the public – and how such representations continue to resonate. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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4.4
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About

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork

Information

  • Creator
    New Books Network
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    333
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Show Website
    New Books in Mexican Studies

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