Radio in Revolution: Wireless Technology and State Power in Mexico, 1897–1938

Radio in Revolution offers a clearly written, meticulously researched, and previously untold chronicle of the role that radio technologies played in revolutionary Mexico. It makes an important contribution to Mexican radio studies and early twentieth-century Mexican history by identifying how Porfirian and revolutionary governments used radio communications for strategic coordination and state building. While the study offers important new insights into radio's role in the Mexican Revolution, it has two serious shortcomings. First, Radio in Revolution makes numerous overly ambitious claims about the political and military impact of radio technologies that are not supported by the evidence. Second, the book overstates the continuities and downplays the differences in radio technologies across the 40-year period covered in the study. This leads to exaggeration of the influence of radio technologies, a lack of contextualization of their use, and potential confusion about which technologies are...