Martin Lahiff Discusses History of Mexico in THE OTHER SIDE

Author Martin Lahiff believes that there is a need for a non-scholarly but reportorial history of Mexico by an American who can write one. His new publication, The Other Side, chronicles the history of Mexico from 1519 to the present.

Most Mexican historians tended to write in a patriotic fervor, and American writings tended to concentrate on American concerns. Lahiff wanted something dispassionately factual. Although his thirty years in Mexico has intruded on this account, he relied heavily on the works of the historians, mixing their unique views and versions as his sources.

The Mexican nation that people know today maybe began with the Mejicas, but it had a long way to go. The heroism and genius of Hernan Cortez and his white-skinned men had a lot to do with what Mexico came to be, arriving in the New World a century before their Protestant cousins. Later on, the Spanish and the Portuguese established colonies and governments throughout Mexico, Central and South America. The country went through several falls starting from its independence to the installation of the Republic and the present government it has today.

In this educational and greatly enlightening book, Lahiff sticks with facts and leaves out its distinctive art and music, the magnificence of its mountains and valleys and the rich life that lives and grows there since he cannot do them justice. The Other Side is not about the deep essence of Mexico but about its existence. It is about what happened to it, not about what it is.

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About the Author
Martin Lahiff retired from the U.S. Foreign Service as a consul at the end of 1992 and wrote seven books in Mexico. Raised in Riverdale, New York, he attended St. Gabriel's parochial school on its rustic hill above the Hudson River during World War II, and Power Memorial Academy in the city. Starting at eleven years he delivered groceries for Jacob Sodakov, meat for Dominic the Butcher, newspapers for the Bronx Home News, and worked his way through Iona College with a scholarship and summer construction work on bridges, highways, pipelines, and tunnels in New Jersey, and a singer's summer job for Stonegate Lodge in the Adirondacks. He attended St. John's on a Thomas More law scholarship until he found writing work at Prentice-Hall publishers, the New York Journal American, the Bisbee Review, and the Yuma Sun of Arizona, which ended with a libel suit and Federal rescue with SSA posts in Phoenix, San Diego, Inglewood, Yuma, and San Francisco, and a transfer to the Foreign Service with assignments in Mexico City and Athens and regions covering the Americas, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. He and Cecilia Rogel, married for 53 years, have three children and five grandchildren. The libel suit was dropped.

The Other Side * by Martin Lahiff
A Fence Away
Publication Date: July 3, 2013
Trade Paperback; $19.99; 219 pages; 978-1-4836-6060-8
Trade Hardback; $29.99; 219 pages; 978-1-4836-6061-5
eBook; $3.99; 978-1-4836-6062-2

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