Ninety years ago our border with Mexico was not secure, but the issue of the day was not illegal immigration. Our newspapers were filled with the story of the Mexican revolutionary bandit Pancho Villa and his late night raid of Columbus, New Mexico, where his men killed eighteen people. The story of the night and the chase of Villa into Mexico by General John Pershing is told by Pulitzer Prize journalist Eileen Welsome in The General & the Jaguar: Pershing's Hunt for Pancho Villa: A True Story of Revolution & Revenge.
Welsome's book is divided into several sections. The first 151 pages focus on the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa, and the attack on the small New Mexico town. General Pershing, referred to in the title, is not introduced until page 164. In the second section of the book, Welsome chronicles the 1916 U.S. military invasion of the northern states of Mexico to capture Villa, a ten-month expedition which nearly started a war. The final section tells of the troop withdrawal, the reappearance of Villa, the trials in New Mexico courts, and the subsequent careers of all the central characters.
As a journalist, Welsome mostly tells the story without editorializing. Readers get to draw their own conclusions as to why the story is interesting in 2006. Supply your own current newspapers.
Librarians can add The General & the Jaguar to their nonfiction-that-reads-like-a-novel lists.
Welsome, Eileen. The General & the Jaguar: Pershing's Hunt for Pancho Villa: A True Story of Revolution & Revenge. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2006. ISBN 0316715999
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