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Berger, Bruce, Almost an Island: Travels in Baja California
A poet-pianist's memoirs, often hilarious. One of the best books on Baja California.
Author's website.

Biggers, Jeff, In the Sierra Madre
Author's website.

Blasio, José Luis, Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico
The Emperor Maximilian's private secretary and also, during a dramatic intermediate period, serving the Empress Carlota in Europe in 1866 (in which he witnessed her psychotic breakdown), José Luis Blasio (1842 - 1923) published his memoir in Mexico City and Paris in 1905 as Maximiliano íntimo. It did not come out in English until Yale University Press published it in 1934. Never mind its less-than-correct political stance, Blasio's lushly vivid memoir is one of the literary treasures of Mexico. As Bernal Díaz's The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, so Blasio's Maximiliano íntimo is to Mexico's Second Empire.
Read my blog post about this book.

Burton, Tony, Western Mexico: A Traveler's Treasury
A unique guidebook chock full of surprises, plus beautiful illustrations and many maps.
Don't venture into Western Mexico without it.

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Caballero, Raymond, Lynching Pascual Orozco: Mexican Revolutionary Hero and Paradox
This is the first major biography in over 40 years of one of the most important figures of the Mexican Revolution. Caballero is the ex-mayor of El Paso, Texas and, in his words "a recovering lawyer"— a background that no doubt helped him unravel the conspiracy he found revealed in the one hundred year-old records of the Culberson County Courthouse, apparently intended to cover up what really happened to Pascual Orozco and his men in the High Lonesome Mountains south of Van Horn in 1915. Caballero's Lynching Pascual Orozco is an important contribution to the history of not only the Mexican Revolution, but of the state of Chihuahua and of the borderlands of Far West Texas.
Listen in (or read the transcript of) my podcast interview with Caballero

Cadena, Agustín, An Avocado from Michoacoán
A bilingual chapbook of a short story by one of Mexico's most accomplished and prolific literary writers, translated by Yours Truly. (Please note: unfortunately at this time only collectable editions from other sellers are available. I hope to be able to make copies available again at their original price soon.)

Calderon de la Barca, Frances, Life in Mexico
This deliciously vivid memoir of 1842 by the Scottish-born wife of Spain's first ambassador to Mexico should go at the top of the list for any Mexicophile.
Read my review for Tin House

Call, Wendy, No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy
A richly researched and passionate look at Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a little known and yet culturally, economically, historcally, and politically vital part of Mexico. Winner of the Grub Street National Book Prize for Nonfiction.

Castañeda, Alfredo, Book of Hours / Libro de horas
No exaggeration, this is one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen: Poems and paintings by one of Mexico's most original and accomplished artists, Alfredo Castañeda, translated by the greatest living translator of Mexican literature, Margaret Sayers Peden.

Coe, Sophie D., and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate
Not just for chocolate nerds! A delightfully thorough history of Mexico's most delicious bean.

Cooke, Catherine Nixon. The Thistle and the Rose: Romance, Railroads, and Big Oil in Revolutionary Mexico
This family history of Scotsman John George McNab and Oaxacan Guadalupe Fuentes Nivon McNab not only gives an overview of the transformation of the Mexican economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but some of Mexico's ethnic, social, and regional diversity, both of which are far greater than U.S. media and Mexican tourist industry narratives would suggest.

Corchado, Alfredo, Midnight in Mexico

Cortez, Sarah, and Sergio Troncoso, Our Lost Border: Essays on Life Amid the Narco-Violence
Lurid television, newspaper stories, and cliché-ridden movies about Mexico abound in English; rare is any writing that plumbs to meaningful depths or attempts to explore its complexities. And so, out of a concatenation of ignorance, presumption and prejudice, those North Americans who read only English have been deprived of the stories that would help them see the Spanish-speaking peoples and cultures right next door, and even within the United States itself, and the tragedies daily unfolding because of or, at the very least kindled by, the voracious North American appetite for drugs. For this reason, Our Lost Border: Essays on Life Amid the Narco-Violence, a treasure trove of one dozen personal essays, deserves to be celebrated, read, and discussed in every community in North America.
Continue reading my review in Literal Magazine.

Crimm, Carolina Castillo, De León: A Tejano Family History.
We often hear about the Tejanos (Mexican Texans or, as you please, Texan Mexicans) in Mexican and Texas history, but who were they? Crimm's De León provides an intimate glimpse of one of the first and most influential Tejano families though several generations, beginning with Don Martín de Léon and his wife Doña Patricia de la Garza, the founders of the de Léon colony and the town of Victoria on the coastal plains of Texas in the early 19th century. They and their descendants weathered Mexican civil wars; Comanche attacks; cattle rustlers; cholera; the Texas Revolution of 1835-36; the massive influx of "Anglo" immigrants; exile and legal battles to reclaim their land; the US Civil War and Reconstruction; and, into the late 19th century, the rise of the railroads and the cattle ranching industry.
Read my interview with the author here.

Crosby, Harry, The Last of the Californios
A fascinating and beautifully documented account of the ranch people of the remote valleys of Baja California's sierra.

—— The Cave Paintings of Baja California
The authoritative and full-color work on the great murals of Baja California, the most spectacular— and very remote— rock art of the Americas.
Author's website

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Gallo, Rubén, Freud's Mexico: Into the Wilds of Psychoanalysis

Garrison, Philip, The Permit That Never Expires: Migrant Tales from the Ozark Hills to the Mexican Mountains
Anyone who wants to understand Mexican immigration should read this book— and it's a gripping read, for Garrison is at once stylish, unusually perceptive, wryly humorous, and, above all, both compassionate and deeply knowledgeable. This is an astonishingly original and important work.

—— Because I Don't Have Wings: Stories of Mexican Immigrant Life
In this brilliant , original, and astonishingly intimate book, Garrison eloquently shows us that borders are not always where we think they are. Every page is both a pleasure and a surprise.

Gilman, Nicholas, Good Food in Mexico City
The hands-down best and frequently updated and outstanding guide book to, like the title says, good food in Mexico City. Don't visit Mexico City without it.

Gooch, Fanny,  Face to Face with the Mexicans
First published in 1887, Gooch's Face to Face with the Mexicans, is on-line here in a very readable format. It includes 200 charming illustrations by Isabel V. Waldo, as well as portraits of the characters in my novel, Agustin de Iturbide y Green and his mother, Dona Alicia Green de Iturbide. An edited (severely abridged) version with an introduction by C.H. Gardiner was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 1966. However, said version does not include the material about the Iturbides, which strikes me as rather like leaving the meat out of the taco. The original is a hefty leather-bound collector's item with full-color illustrations. If you look for it on, say, www.abebooks.com, make sure you're getting a first edition of 1887. I paid USD$100 for mine, found in an antiquarian bookshop, some 15 years ago.

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Kandell, Jonathan, La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City
This is one of my favorite books about Mexico. It reads like a novel but is beaufully researched.

Kaplan, Janet A., Remedios Vario: Unexpected Journeys

Katz, Friedrich, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa
Pray that it comes out in Kindle... it's wonderful, but at over 1,000 pages, a total doorstop.

Kennedy, Diana, The Essential Cuisines of Mexico
One of Mexico's national treasures: well, I mean both the cuisines and the author, who is English, a long-time resident of Michoacán, a splendid writer and tireless and most original researcher. If you get one book on Mexican cuisine, make it one by Diana Kennedy.

Krauze, Enrique, Biography of Power
The big enchilada of Mexican history in bite-sized and very readable biographies.

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Paz, Octavio, Sor Juana or, The Traps of Faith
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden.
See my essay, which mentions this book: "What the Muse Sent Me About the Tenth Muse, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz"

Perry, Richard, and Rosalind Perry, Maya Missions: Exploring Colonial Yucatan
Don't go to Yucatan without this outstanding guidebook.

Perry, Richard D., More Maya Missions: Exploring Colonial Chiapas
Don't go to Chiapas without this one, either.

——Exploring Yucatan: A Traveler's Anthology
A sparkler. Essential reading for anyone interested in the peninsula.

——Exploring Colonial Oaxaca: The Art and Architecture
Essential for anyone visiting or interested in Oaxaca.

——Mexico's Fortress Monasteries

——Blue Lakes and Silver Cities: The Colonial Arts and Architecture of West Mexico

Richard Perry's blog is Colonial Mexico


Poniatowska, Elena, Massacre in Mexico 
The title in English is a sad echo of the original, La noche de Tlatelolco. One of the most important works of journalism in Mexico, an oral history of the massacres of student protestors in in Mexico City in 1968.
Listen in to my interview with her biographer, Michael K. Schuessler.

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Schneider, Paul, Brutal Journey: Cabeza de Vaca and the First Epic Frist Crossing of America 
It is verily peculiar that Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca is not better known among English speaking peoples, and especially in the Unites States. That old saw, "truth is stranger than fiction" applies in his case, or at least his version of events, which one might as well believe because the fantastic fact is, Cabeza de Vaca did reappear in northern Mexico in late April of 1536, one of only four survivors of the 400 who participated in the Narváez expedition to Florida in March of 1528. He left a memoir, translated as Castaways, and based on this, as well as other documents and archaelogical research about the peoples he encountered, Paul Schnieder has written a jaw-stopping story that reads like a novel.

Schuessler, Michael K., Elena Poniatowska: An Intimate Biography
Listen in to my interview with Michael K. Schuessler.

Smith, Jack, God and Mr. Gomez
A Los Angeles Times reporter's memoir of building a house in Baja California. The topic and tone are light but the narrative structure is a many-faceted jewel. When the histories of late 20th century Mexico are written, the second householder gringo invasion of Baja California will be a chapter; here is a participant with a splendid sense of humor. Bibliographers take note.

Stavans, Ilán, Octavio Paz: A Meditation
Poet, essayist, critic, translator, and editor, Octavio Paz was, writes Stavans, "the quintessential surveyor, a Dante's Virgil, a Renaissance man [p.3]... and a believer in reason and dreams and poetic invention as our only salvation. [p.4]" Born in 1914 in Mexico City, Paz lived past the age of eighty, having written over forty books of poetry and essays, among the latter, the classic Labyrinth of Solitude, in which, writes Stavans, "he articulated, in lucid, erudite, nonacademic prose, and with Olympian authority, the key to the question he nurtured in his heart for years: What does it mean to be a Mexican in today's world?" [p.30] Stavans' small book is not hagiography; rather, a series of personal reflections and explorations on Paz's influence both on the Mexican cultural scene and on Stavans' own development as writer and editor.
Continue reading my review for the Hyde Park Review of Books.

Stevenson, Sara Yorke, Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867
One of the best memoirs of the period, by a woman who went on to become a noted archeologist of the 19th century.

Sullivan, Rosemary, Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseilles.
You might not guess it from the title, but Villa Air-Bel is essential reading for understanding modern art in post-WW-II Mexico.
My article about the author and this book, "A Traveler in Mexico: A Rendezvous with Writer Rosemary Sullivan," appeared in Inside Mexico, March 2009.