Enrique Florescano, arguably the dean of living historians in Mexico and one of the most influential scholars of the twentieth century in the field of Mexican history, has written a wide-ranging, thoughtful, if ultimately rather quirky book about the historiography of the country by Mexicans, recognizably linked to several of his previous works on indigenous myth complexes and forms of collective memory. His central objects are “interpretations of history that in different periods have attempted to explain the Mexican past” (p. xi), not only among professional historians, but also custodians of the state and the common people. Beginning with accounts from the pre-Columbian period (including mythology, mural cycles, stele inscriptions, and codices that survived the conquest), the book moves successively through the colonial period, the era of nation building following independence from Spain, revolutionary nationalism of the post-1910 period, and the age of professionalization of history as a discipline in...
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