In this post from last week, I mentioned some fiction occupying the Western and Southwestern United States. Below are some nonfiction books that I found helpful or though-provoking, and if anything comes to mind, mention it in the comments section, on Twitter, or Facebook:
To
Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War by Jon Gibler (2011)
In recent years, a plethora of books have been
written and published about the drug crisis south of the border. While I have
only begun to scratch the surface in reading about and trying to understand
what’s transpired between the United States and Mexico over the last couple
decades, Gibler’s book is as good a place as any to start. In it, he traces the
history of the drug trade and the War on Drugs and, moving from one body left
for dead after another, he exposes, if not solutions, then at least the problem’s
shape in full.
The United States’ population, through its appetite
for escape and denial, has revealed itself to have a blind disregard for both
its own well-being and the well-being of those living outside its borders.
Without us, there is no drug trade. Second, military industrial complex has
profited from our willingness to fight an impossible war. Third, unlike what we
see on Breaking Bad, which I loved,
the suffering of drug violence is disproportionately south of the border and
perhaps the true crime of FX’s popular series is how we all sympathized with
Walter White’s family and Jesse Pinkman and not the unaccounted victims of
their industry’s trade.
