&"Professor Chassen-L&opez has rewritten the history of Oaxaca, Mexico, from the mid-nineteenth century through the onset of the Mexican Revolution in 1911. She illuminates almost every nook and cranny of this geographically, ethnically, and economically diverse state. The book represents many years of remarkable excavations in local, state, and national archives. No other regional history of any other Mexican state exhibits this thorough a survey of sources. The book is encyclopedic in its coverage. Virtually no aspect of politics and economics during the forty-four years under study goes unexplored. The book is at its best in its depiction of the &'Worlds of the Indigenous.&' Chassen-Lopez realistically depicts village life.

Her analysis of indigenous resistance to the encroachments of centralization and economic and cultural modernization is particularly insightful.&" &Mark Wasserman, Rutgers University.