México en sus libros . By Enrique Florescano and Pablo Mijangos. Mexico City: Taurus, 2004. Pp. 196. Indices. $17.00 paper.
Given a marked tendency within Latin American historiography classes to assign only works in English, Anglophone historians too often graduate with but a vague notion of the depth and breadth of Spanish-language scholarship. If it has not been translated, goes the implicit assumption, it has not entered the canon. Enrique Florescano and Pablo Mijangos afford a useful antidote to such myopia with Mexico en sus libros, a guide to some 600 available works about Mexico. While chiefly designed for a domestic readership, this compilation conveniently informs the foreigner what Mexico's eminent scholars have been writing—and hence what they are reading. Organized by chronological epoch, and then subdivided by theme, the guide focuses on history but sensibly includes key works in political science, anthropology, literature and other fields. It also embraces a substantial amount of work in translation, which in turn suggests that Mexican historians may well be better versed in the work of their Anglo counterparts than vice versa. It further suggests their greater reverence for classic analyses. One notes that David Brading's early scholarship remains readily accessible to Mexicans, long after Cambridge University Press de-listed the English editions. The same is true of Charles Cumberland's work on the Mexican Revolution.