This book of essays is full of personality. Readers come to know the author and his likes, dislikes, quirks, and delights before they have even finished the introduction, and the friendship between author and reader continues to build throughout the essays. The book is also full of erudition (Knight’s early training in the history of many places besides Mexico emerges in enlightening ways), insights (most often, but by no means only, for Mexico), and lovely writing (slightly baroque, with lots of dashes, parentheses, and other well-placed extenders that somehow manage to conclude their sentences brilliantly).
The essays, written between 2008 and 2016 but never published, center on the period from the late colony to about 1930, with forays both backward into the early colony and forward into the later twentieth century. The text spans 215 pages, and the must-read, chatty notes add another 150. All the essays use comparative methods...