This is a coffee-table book. It will be disappointing to anybody who really wants to know about the Casasolas and their famous photographic archive, although the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores found it useful as a Christmas present for diplomats and bureaucrats under the more appropriate title, Mirada y memoria: Archivo fotográfico Casasola. It is a Mexican custom for secretariats, banks, and large corporations to bestow picture books as gifts for their patrons, despite the fact that they are often not worth the expensive paper on which they are printed. (One notable exception is El ojo de vidrio: Cien años de fotografía del México indio, coordinated by Jaime Vélez Storey and published by Bancomex in 1993.)
Mexico: The Revolution and Beyond is particularly unsatisfactory, and the book’s many shortcomings begin with the opening essay by Pete Hamill, an undistinguished journalist who knows little of Mexican history and nothing whatsoever...
