The Wind that Swept Mexico

Book excerpt: “100 pages of text and 184 historical news photographs . . . This is the Mexican Revolution in its drama, its complexity, its incompleteness.” —Bertram D. Wolfe The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 with the overthrow of dictator Porfirio Díaz. The Wind That Swept Mexico, originally published in 1943, was the first book to present a broad account of that revolution in its several different phases. In concise but moving words and in memorable photographs, this classic sweeps the reader along from the false peace and plenty of the Díaz era through the doomed administration of Madero, the chaotic years of Villa and Zapata, Carranza and Obregón, to the peaceful social revolution of Cárdenas and Mexico’s entry into World War II. The photographs were assembled from many sources by George R. Leighton with the assistance of Anita Brenner and others. Many of the prints were cleaned and rephotographed by the distinguished photographer Walker Evans. “Here is the history of the revolution in 184 of the best photographs of the time. The whole disintegration and painful reintegration of a society is marvelously set before the eyes.” —Times Literary Supplement “A classic and sympathetic statement of the first of the great twentieth century revolutions—its words and pictures command our attention and our respect.” —Military History “One could not have seen it more closely and fully had one taken part in it.” —Bertram D. Wolfe