francis j. brooks is senior lecturer in history at Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia. Formerly a member of the Order of Friars Minor, he received the Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1976. His research interests center on religion and disease; he is currently writing a social history of smallpox and conducting research on the culture of missionaries. His published writings include “Revising the Conquest of Mexico: Smallpox, Sources, and Populations” (Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1993); “The First Impact of Smallpox: What Was the Columbian Exchange Rate?” (in Columbus and the Consequences of 1492, edited by Anthony Disney, 1994); and “Text and Truth: Reading Latin American History” (Historical Journal, 1994).
peter guardino is assistant professor of history at Indiana University. He is the author of Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico’s National State: Guerrero, 1800–1857, forthcoming.
charles a. hale is professor of history at the University of Iowa. His research focuses on political and social ideas in modern Latin America. He is the author of Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, 1821–1853 (1968) and The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico (1989). Currently he is investigating liberalism and the Mexican Revolution.
