Here are 100 books that The Unarmed Truth fans have personally recommended if you like
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I became passionate about the Mexico/US border question after meeting someone who is now a close friend, a Mexican academic who introduced me to some of the issues. She helped me write Saint Death as a way to explore the politics of ultra-capitalism, in the form of multinational business, and the action of drug cartels.
I could have picked almost any of Bowdenâs books on the border, for example, the excellent Murder City, but Iâm choosing Laboratory of the Future as itâs the first piece of his writing I came across. Bowden, who lived on both sides of the US/Mexican border for many years, was intimate with his subject, and the brutal power of his journalistic writing puts most novelists to shame. He is not afraid to question us or confront us, or hide his anger, but it is never unwarranted. In this book, he, and the thirteen Mexican photographers whose frequently shocking images accompany the text, paints a grim picture of the nature of ultra-capitalism when allowed to run free just south of the border â it is, he says, an experiment: it is the laboratory of our future.
Investigates the myth and reality of the current relationship between the United States and Mexico, with a focus on the more intimate connection between El Paso and the border town of Juarez. The photographers take on issues of immigration, NAFTA, gangs, corruption, drug trafficking, and poverty, and uncover a different Mexico.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesâall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueâŠ
I became passionate about the Mexico/US border question after meeting someone who is now a close friend, a Mexican academic who introduced me to some of the issues. She helped me write Saint Death as a way to explore the politics of ultra-capitalism, in the form of multinational business, and the action of drug cartels.
For a closer look at the way drug cartels work, Wainwright suggests we need to think of them in terms of big business, for that is what, underneath the extreme violence and horror, they are.
What drug lords learned from big businessHow does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the 300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola. And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work,and stop throwing away 100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the war" against this global,âŠ
I have always strived to speak out when surrounded by silence, whether in person through my own voice, or through the books I have written and had published. Not because I am heroic or noble, but because I am angered by suppressed truth, and I believe reality should be shown as it is, not as people believe it should be. That is why the books I chose are so important to me, because they fearlessly exposed the truths the respective authors were determined to show, risks be damned. I hope these books inspire you as much as they have inspired me.
I loved this book because of the many years I spent living in Mexico and the deep connection I have to that country, culture, and its people. The sheer potency and ferocity from which the various authors wrote of the tragedies and struggles plaguing contemporary Mexico was astounding.
With bravery that is hard to fathom, the collection of celebrated journalists exposed the realities and truths of their beloved country that government officials, police, and military have killed to keep silent. I was angry, sad, moved, and inspired all at the same time while reading this book, and it showed me the power of writing as realistically as possible without compromise.
With contributions from seven of Mexico's finest journalists, this is reportage at its bravest and most necessary - it has the power to change the world's view of their country, and by the force of its truth, to start to heal the country's many sorrows.
Supported the Arts Council Grant's for the Arts Programme and by PEN Promotes
Veering between carnival and apocalypse, Mexico has in the last ten years become the epicentre of the international drug trade. The so-called "war on drugs" has been a brutal and chaotic failure (more than 160,000 lives have been lost). The drug cartelsâŠ
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,âŠ
I became passionate about the Mexico/US border question after meeting someone who is now a close friend, a Mexican academic who introduced me to some of the issues. She helped me write Saint Death as a way to explore the politics of ultra-capitalism, in the form of multinational business, and the action of drug cartels.
I wanted to include a book here on âHoly Deathâ herself, Santa Muerte, but there simply isnât a good one. Thereâs a terrible one published by a once respectable academic publisher, but I canât recommend it. Instead, there are some passages on Santa Muerte in this huge and significant piece of work: Lomnitzâs encyclopedic book digs into Mexicoâs deep roots to explore the long relationship the country has with Death, of which the still growing âcultâ of Santa Muerte is but one emanation.
Death and the Idea of Mexico is the first social, cultural, and political history of death in a nation that has made death its tutelary sign. Examining the history of death and of the death sign from the sixteenth-century holocaust to contemporary Mexican American identity politics, anthropologist Claudio Lomnitzâs innovative study marks a turning point in understanding Mexicoâs rich and unique use of death imagery. Unlike contemporary Europeans and Americans, whose denial of death permeates their cultures, the Mexican people display and cultivate a jovial familiarity with death. This intimacy with death has become the cornerstone of Mexicoâs national identity.âŠ
Iâm a political philosopher who lives in Seattle. I teach and write about political ethics, and the ways in which moral concepts change when they get applied to the relationships between statesâand to the complicated borders that define where states end. I tend to write about what puzzles me, and many of these puzzles come from my personal life; Iâm a migrant myself, and the experience of migrating to the United States led me to write about what sorts of values a country can rightly pursue through migration policyâand what sorts of things, more generally, it can and canât do to migrants themselves.
Neiwertâs book focuses on the horrifying case of Shawna Forde, an anti-migration activist who ended up murdering a child on the Arizona border in an attempt to steal money to fund her activism. Itâs sometimes easier to understand the politics of the borderlands by focusing on particular people who inhabit and cross the borders; Neiwert let me see the complex politics of the Arizona border, and the ways in which those politics can curdle into a murderous rage.
It began with a frantic 911 call from a woman in a dusty Arizona border town. A gang claiming to be affiliated with the Border Patrol had shot her husband and daughter. It was initially assumed that the murders were products of border drug wars ravaging the Southwest until the leader of one of the more prominent offshoots of the Minutemen movement was arrested for plotting the home invasion as part of a scheme to finance a violent antigovernment border militia. And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing to the Dark Side of the American Border is award-winning journalist David Neiwert'sâŠ
I have always been a seeker, fascinated by all cultures, philosophies, and spiritual perspectives. Although the concept is often differentâfor some, itâs a place of refuge, feeling safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger, or trouble; for others, itâs a state of being, an inner peace, Iâve found that the search for sanctuaryâsafe-havenâelsewhereâhas ancient roots and contemporary reverberations. My novel, Guesthouse for Ganesha, further heightened my interest in this subject, for my protagonist, Esther GrĂŒnspan, both deeply wounded and unsafe, was compelled to seek sanctuary. As a first-time novelist with an 18-year journey to publication, I fully immersed myself in this topicâs study and comprehension.
In Debra Thomasâs compassionately rendered Luz, her protagonistâs (Alma) border crossing from Mexico into the United States is relayed in painful, harrowing, and often shocking detail. It is a powerful and, at times, difficult read. Yet an important one. I often forgot that this is a work of fiction, as the story Thomas so deftly portrays is all too common and all too real, especially for a resident of Southern California, which I am. However, it is one filled with hope and determination and the unwavering spirit of a young, passionate girl in search of answers.
Alma Cruz wishes her willful teenage daughter, Luz, could know the truth about her past, but there are things Luz can never know about the journey Alma took to the US to find her missing father.
In 2000-three years after the disappearance of her father, who left Oaxaca to work on farms in California-Alma sets out on a perilous trek north with her sister, Rosa. What happens once she reaches the US is a journey from despair to hope.
Timeless in its depiction of the depths of family devotion and the blaze of first love, Luz conveys, with compassion andâŠ
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlifeâmostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket miceânear her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marksâŠ
As a writer, Iâve been deeply influenced by Southern literatureâespecially the work of William Faulkner and Flannery OâConnor. Even though Iâm not from the South myself, I am drawn to Southern writersâ immodesty. I believe much of contemporary literature is too timid. It is about the mundane, the everyday. It does not elevate; instead, it diminishes. Much of the literature of the South is biblical in its sensibilities. It is unafraid to deal with the big universal issues with language that is equally big and universal. It does not pander to modesty or postmodern selfconsciousness. It is audacious. Itâs the kind of writing that made me want to write.
Mixing Faulknerâs gothic language with McCarthyâs sense of history, Blake writes a story of two brothers torn apart by circumstance and their experiences in the Mexican-American War. Blake captures that sense of aimless wandering that echoes Faulknerâs storiesâthe rootless characters meandering across the country, not only unsure of their destinations but maybe even indifferent to them. To me, one of the most profound twists in the book is that the brothers donât seem to care which side of the war they participate in. They are itinerants whose purpose in the world is simply circumstantial; they are instruments of universal forces that they neither question nor understand.Â
The offspring of a whore mother and a homicidal father, Edward and John Little are driven from their home in the Florida swamplands by a sching parent's treacheries, and by a shameful, horrific act that will haunt their dreams for the rest of their days. Joining the swelling ranks of the rootless--wandering across an almost surreal bloodland populated by the sorrowfully lost and defiantly damned--two brothers are separated by death and circumstance in the lawless "Dixie City" of New Orelans, and dispatched by destiny to opposing sides in a fierce and desperate territorial struggled between Mexico and the United States.âŠ
I'm a writer of humorous fiction living in Austin, Texas. I enjoy writing novels about unusual friendships and the healing power that comes when people just shut up and listen to each other. Many of my stories have the odd-couple dynamic on full display and I love to explore what would happen if people with very different backgrounds and opinions are forced to deal with each other. I do have a couple of novels that wouldnât seem to be humorous on the surface, but there is an element of humor or comedy that runs through all of my work. My next novel, The Codger and the Sparrow, will be published by TCU Press in 2024.
These stories are all surreal, trippy, and many are quite funny. Sort of a mashup of MĂĄrquez, Burroughs, and Bukowski, trying to pin down Floresâ actual style is difficult as it is wholly unique: the ultimate compliment for a writer. One story is about a couple who make a sculpture of a baby using their ear wax while the male partner is a writer who also is paid to be a life coach to other writers of lesser talent. Another story is about two men who are neighbors, one of which owns an extraterrestrial shape-shifting cloth, the other is a philosophizing writer prone to drink too much. This collection of short stories is top-notch as well as bizarre and humorous.
No one captures the border-its history and imagination, its danger, contradiction, and redemption-like Fernando A. Flores, whose stories reimagine and reinterpret the region's existence with peerless style. In his immersive, uncanny borderland, things are never what they seem: a world where the sun is both rising and setting, and where conniving possums efficiently take over an entire town and rewrite its history.
The stories in Valleyesque dance between the fantastical and the hyperreal with dexterous, often hilarious flair. A dying Frederic Chopin stumbles through Ciudad Juarez in the aftermath of his mother's death, attempting to recover his beloved piano thatâŠ
Iâm a philosopher fascinated by science and its relationship to society, who science benefits and who it harms; why scientists get some things right and some things wrong; and which scientific results make their way into the physicianâs office, the courtroom, and the school textbook. Science impacts all facets of our lives: our health, our relationships with others, and our understanding of our place in our community and in the universe. Iâve spent decades investigating this relationship between science and society; these are some of the books Iâve found most influential in thinking about how we, as humans, impact the environment around us, which in turn circles back and impacts us. Â
In 1973, Smeltertown was razed to the ground. For the vibrant community of Mexican Americans who had lived there for generations, that meant abandoning their homes, their social gathering spaces, and their way of life.
Smeltertown was destroyed because public health research revealed that the industrial smelter around which the town formed was spewing tons of toxic lead into the air and poisoning the developing brains of the Mexican-American children who lived there.
This book tells the heartbreaking story of how that community first took shape on the Texas-Mexico border, how it grew to become a bustling suburb of El Paso, and how the lead poisoning ultimately spelled its destruction. The concept of environmental racism wouldnât come along until decades later; but in hindsight, this town was a textbook example of how environmental threats to health disproportionately impact communities of color. Â
Company town. Blighted community. Beloved home. Nestled on the banks of the Rio Grande, at the heart of a railroad, mining, and smelting empire, Smeltertown--La Esmelda, as its residents called it--was home to generations of ethnic Mexicans who labored at the American Smelting and Refining Company in El Paso, Texas. Using newspapers, personal archives, photographs, employee records, parish newsletters, and interviews with former residents, including her own relatives, Monica Perales unearths the history of this forgotten community. Spanning almost a century, Smeltertown traces the birth, growth, and ultimate demise of a working class community in the largest U.S. city onâŠ
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circularâŠ
I write thrillers full-time these days, but for many years, I was a writer and editor at publications that take reporting and fact-checking seriously. I still strive for accuracy in my novelsâwhich always involve violence. As a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt, the mechanics and psychology of close-quarters combat are things I think about daily. This is not to say that you need to rob banks to write a heist scene. And while technical knowledge is helpful, thereâs no substitute for close noticing of what happens to our bodies and minds in extreme situations. Here are some books (and one screenplay) which do that incredibly well.
Iâll never forget my first Jiu-Jitsu competition in front of a screaming crowd. I barely remember the actual fight, but what sticks in my head is the buildup to itâthe warm-ups, the waiting, the bizarre cocktail of fear and boredom. It all felt weirdly familiar, thanks to the famous knife fight scene from this book, which Iâve read at least a dozen times.
The protagonist, John Grady Cole, is stuck in a Mexican prison when he learns that another prisoner is planning an attempt on his life. What follows is an excruciating waiting game. McCarthy nails the detailsâthe sharpening of the senses, the undercurrent of dread, the way your perception of time slows and accelerates in unpredictable ways when the moment finally arrives.Â
John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
The first volume in McCarthy's legendary Border Trilogy, All The Pretty Horses is an acknowledged masterpiece and a grand love story: a novel about the passing of childhood, of innocence and a vanished AmericanâŠ
