100 books like Gertrude Blom

By Alex Harris (editor), Margaret Sartor (editor), Gertrude Blom (photographer)

Here are 100 books that Gertrude Blom fans have personally recommended if you like Gertrude Blom. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Graciela Iturbide's Mexico: Photographs

Lois Parkinson Zamora Author Of Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America, 1866-1994

From my list on Latin American photography.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've taught Latin American literature for many years and in many different ways, but there's one thing that has never changed. I always combine our study of literature with relevant works of visual arts, and particularly with paintings and photographs. Don’t we all move naturally among different media—different forms of expression, different ways of seeing—to understand our world? An interdisciplinary approach allows us to explore the many ways that we imagine and represent reality. Photography is a wide-ranging way to know Latin America. For this reason, I recommend that you pay close attention to the rich traditions of Latin American photography. Mix and match media, and you’ll understand the world in new and different ways. 

Lois' book list on Latin American photography

Lois Parkinson Zamora Why did Lois love this book?

Graciela Iturbide (b. 1942) is Mexico’s most important living photographer. 

Her photographs document indigenous and mestizo groups on the isthmus of Tehuantepec, including photos of Frida Kahlo dressed in the blouses (huipiles) of the women of Tehuantepec, who are known for their strength. Her work offers insights into the daily lives and customs of the Seri, Juchitán, and Mixtec people: their exuberant fiestas, processions, and most importantly, their daily lives.

She depicts animals, birds, and plants with as much sensitivity as she does people, always callng attention to the relationship of her subjects to natural phenomena. The photographs in this book were exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and there are a number of other books of Iturbide’s photographs if this one isn’t available. Her images will take your breath away.

By Graciela Iturbide (photographer),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Graciela Iturbide's Mexico as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first book to focus on Graciela Iturbide's photographs of Mexico, capturing all of its beauties, rituals, challenges, and contradictions.

Graciela Iturbide, best known for iconic photographs of indigenous women of Mexico, has engaged with her homeland as a subject for the past fifty years in images of great variety and depth. The intensely personal, lyrical photographs collected and interpreted in this book show that, for her, photography is a way of life - as well as a way of seeing and understanding Mexico, with all its beauties, rituals, challenges, and contradictions.

The Mexico portrayed here is a country in…


Book cover of The Wind That Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1942

Lois Parkinson Zamora Author Of Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America, 1866-1994

From my list on Latin American photography.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've taught Latin American literature for many years and in many different ways, but there's one thing that has never changed. I always combine our study of literature with relevant works of visual arts, and particularly with paintings and photographs. Don’t we all move naturally among different media—different forms of expression, different ways of seeing—to understand our world? An interdisciplinary approach allows us to explore the many ways that we imagine and represent reality. Photography is a wide-ranging way to know Latin America. For this reason, I recommend that you pay close attention to the rich traditions of Latin American photography. Mix and match media, and you’ll understand the world in new and different ways. 

Lois' book list on Latin American photography

Lois Parkinson Zamora Why did Lois love this book?

The Mexican Revolution was photographed by many photographers, foreigners as well as Mexicans, whose photographs were collected by news agencies and distributed immediately in newspapers, sometimes even as the fighting was going on. Their photos record defining moments in Mexico’s history, and offer portraits of its participants: soldiers and camp followers (women and children), as well as iconic leaders Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, among others. 

I love this book because it is written by a woman who lived her whole life in Mexico, experienced events of the Revolution, and knew many of its participants. Her personal account is accompanied by 184 photos that enhance her text and make events and people come alive.

The importance of this Revolution cannot be exaggerated. It engulfed much of Mexico for at least two decades (1910-1930), and claimed between 2 and 3.5 million lives. Troops advanced on horseback and trains, in dusty fields…

By Anita Brenner, George R. Leighton (photographer),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Wind That Swept Mexico as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 with the overthrow of dictator Porfirio Diaz. The Wind That Swept Mexico, originally published in 1943, was the first book to present a broad account of that revolution in its several different phases. In concise but moving words and in memorable photographs, this classic sweeps the reader along from the false peace and plenty of the Diaz era through the doomed administration of Madero, the chaotic years of Villa and Zapata, Carranza and Obregon, to the peaceful social revolution of Cardenas and Mexico's entry into World War II.

The photographs were assembled from many…


Book cover of Photographing the Mexican Revolution: Commitments, Testimonies, Icons

Lois Parkinson Zamora Author Of Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America, 1866-1994

From my list on Latin American photography.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've taught Latin American literature for many years and in many different ways, but there's one thing that has never changed. I always combine our study of literature with relevant works of visual arts, and particularly with paintings and photographs. Don’t we all move naturally among different media—different forms of expression, different ways of seeing—to understand our world? An interdisciplinary approach allows us to explore the many ways that we imagine and represent reality. Photography is a wide-ranging way to know Latin America. For this reason, I recommend that you pay close attention to the rich traditions of Latin American photography. Mix and match media, and you’ll understand the world in new and different ways. 

Lois' book list on Latin American photography

Lois Parkinson Zamora Why did Lois love this book?

Having read The Winds that Swept Mexico and seen the amazing photographs in that book, you’ll want to know more about the photographers who risked their lives to accompany Mexican troops in battle and in haphazard camps waiting for something to happen.

This book includes many photographs, but focusses on the history of the Revolution as shown in those photographs, and the processes of photography itself:  how photographers worked in the early twentieth century in the midst of war, and how their photographs were collected and published as the Revolution raged on.

John Mraz is an excellent “visual historian.” I admire the way he explains how photographers got their “shots” of mounted revolutionaries and battles and camp followers—the sweethearts and wives and children who followed the troops, cooked for them, and sometimes tended to their wounds.

Mraz also explains how their photographs became instant propaganda for particular leaders and causes—and…

By John Mraz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Photographing the Mexican Revolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 is among the world's most visually documented revolutions. Coinciding with the birth of filmmaking and the increased mobility offered by the reflex camera, it received extraordinary coverage by photographers and cineastes-commercial and amateur, national and international. Many images of the Revolution remain iconic to this day-Francisco Villa galloping toward the camera; Villa lolling in the presidential chair next to Emiliano Zapata; and Zapata standing stolidly in charro raiment with a carbine in one hand and the other hand on a sword, to mention only a few. But the identities of those who created the thousands…


Book cover of Textual Exposures: Photography in Twentieth Century Latin American Narrative Fiction

Lois Parkinson Zamora Author Of Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America, 1866-1994

From my list on Latin American photography.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've taught Latin American literature for many years and in many different ways, but there's one thing that has never changed. I always combine our study of literature with relevant works of visual arts, and particularly with paintings and photographs. Don’t we all move naturally among different media—different forms of expression, different ways of seeing—to understand our world? An interdisciplinary approach allows us to explore the many ways that we imagine and represent reality. Photography is a wide-ranging way to know Latin America. For this reason, I recommend that you pay close attention to the rich traditions of Latin American photography. Mix and match media, and you’ll understand the world in new and different ways. 

Lois' book list on Latin American photography

Lois Parkinson Zamora Why did Lois love this book?

Photographs pretend to replicate the real, as do literary fictions, and yet both media also create their own “realities”.

This book explores how photographs, placed in fictional narratives, can distort and deceive characters (and the reader) or, to the contrary, illustrate and illuminate the story. Photographs in the hands of writers can create alternative “realities” within the fictional world or reveal the truth! 

A primary example of the use of photography in fiction is the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar’s famous story “Blow up,” which was made into a movie—now a classic—directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. In Dan Russek’s book, we see a number of such “mixed media” fictions.

I love Latin American photography, and I love seeing how Latin American novelists engage this powerful medium for their own literary purposes.

By Dan Russek,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Textual Exposures as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Textual Exposures: Photography in Twentieth Century Spanish American Narrative Fiction examines how twentieth-century Spanish American literature has registered photography's powers and limitations, and the creative ways in which writers of this region of the Americas have elaborated in fictional form the conventions and assumptions of this medium. While the book is essentially a study of literary criticism, it also aims to show how texts critically reflect upon the media environment in which they were created. The writings analyzed enter a dialogic relation with visual technologies such as the x-ray, cinema, illustrated journalism, and television. The study examines how these technologies,…


Book cover of Bitter Fruit

June Carolyn Erlick Author Of A Gringa in Bogotá: Living Colombia's Invisible War

From my list on classics for understanding Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I accidentally fell in love with Latin America, a love that has lasted my lifetime. When I was young, I lived in a Dominican neighborhood in New York, learning Spanish from my neighbors. After I graduated from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism I got a job covering the Cuban community in New Jersey because I spoke Spanish. Eventually I ended up living in Colombia and then Managua as a foreign correspondent. Now I edit a magazine at Harvard about Latin America. It's not just the news that interests me; I love the cadence of the language, the smell and taste of its varied cuisine, the warmth of the people, the culture, and, yes, soccer.

June's book list on classics for understanding Latin America

June Carolyn Erlick Why did June love this book?

This book reads like a thriller. The first time I read it, I just couldn't put it down. And every time I reread it, as history unfolds in Latin America, I see how this classic book about the U.S. overthrow of the legitimately elected government in Guatemala in 1954 is actually describing the fundamental basis of intervention in the Cold War that laid the ground for so many of the region's dictatorship.

Bitter Fruit is a brilliant piece of investigation and a story well-told.

By Stephen Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Bitter Fruit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Bitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.


Book cover of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

Judy Juanita Author Of De Facto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland

From my list on how rebels kept up the good fight.

Why am I passionate about this?

I read bios and memoirs because I need to know what really happened. I read several bios of the same person; then piece together a sense of the truth. As a journalist, I understand that all of a person’s life won’t make it into the final story. Editors have a mission of their own; books are molded by exigent demands and social mores. That’s why The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965 had one view of its subject, and Manning Marable’s bio in 2011 another. I’ve read both and other accounts to formulate my own ideas about the man and his times.

Judy's book list on how rebels kept up the good fight

Judy Juanita Why did Judy love this book?

I love it as a tale of heroism, youthful idealism, success, defeat, death over and over. I first read the final chapter of this book in an excerpt after which I ordered it immediately. I had been curious about the real story behind this highly intelligent icon. Disturbing and illuminating, this book shows how driven, outright murderous in the name of revolution, Che was and how this catapulted Fidel and the Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista. I had such empathy for Che as I read through his life that I couldn’t reread the final chapter about his brutal prolonged death.

By Jon Lee Anderson,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Che Guevara as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Che Guevara's legend is unmatched in the modern world. Since his assassination in 1967 at the age of 39, the Argentine revolutionary has become an internationally famed icon, as revered as he is controversial. A Marxist ideologue, he sought to end global inequality by bringing down the American capitalist empire through armed guerrilla warfare - and has few rivals in the Cold War era as an apostle of change.

In Che: A Revolutionary Life, Jon Lee Anderson and Jose Hernandez reveal the man behind the myth, creating a complex portrait of this passionate idealist. Adapted from Anderson's masterwork, Che transports…


Book cover of Disappeared: A Journalist Silenced

K. Lee Lerner Author Of Government, Politics, and Protest: Essential Primary Sources

From my list on women journalists working in dangerous places.

Why am I passionate about this?

K. Lee Lerner is an author, editor, and producer of science and factual media, including four editions of the Gale Encyclopedia of Science and the Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security. His expansive writing on science, climate change, disasters, disease, and global issues has earned multiple book and media awards, including books named Outstanding Academic Titles. An aviator, sailor, and member of the National Press Club in Washington, his two global circumnavigations and portfolio of work in challenging and dangerous environments reveal a visceral drive to explore and investigate. With a public intellectual's broad palate and a scientist's regard for evidence-based analysis, Lerner dissects and accessibly explains complex issues. 

K.'s book list on women journalists working in dangerous places

K. Lee Lerner Why did K. love this book?

June Carolyn Erlick, editor-in-chief for ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America, casts a seasoned journalist’s eye on the 1980 abduction of  Guatemalan journalist Irma Flaquer. Returning home, Flaquer was pulled from her car and was never seen again. Flaquer, a popular and respected journalist with an influential column, Lo Que Otros Callan or "What Others Don't Dare Write",  was also the founder of the first Guatemalan Human Rights Commission. Throughout her career, Flaquer survived beatings, car bombs, and drive-by assassination attempts that did not daunt her from doing her job as a reporter to expose Guatemalan suffering at the hands of their corrupt U.S.-backed government and the cost the Guatemalan people paid as Cold War pawns.

By June Carolyn Erlick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Disappeared as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"If I die, don't cry for me—because I was fighting for what I love."—Irma Flaquer

On a quiet October evening in 1980, Guatemalan journalist Irma Flaquer, returning to her downtown apartment after a visit with her four-year-old grandson, was dragged from her car, never to be seen again. Founder of the first Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, she was a crusading reporter who did not tolerate corruption or repression. Best known for her weekly column that ran for over twenty years in various Guatemalan newspapers—Lo Que Otros Callan or "What Others Don't Dare Write"—Flaquer criticized presidents, politicians, and the heads of…


Book cover of On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey

David Beaupre Author Of Quest and Crew

From my list on travel adventures.

Why am I passionate about this?

There is no easier way to have an adventure than to travel. People have a yearning for travel and adventure. For me it is in the air we breathe. I have spent a lifetime traveling to distant foreign lands and sailing the ocean. It's a good life most of the time. But more importantly, I have been fortunate to have been immersed in the sights and sounds of this magnificent world. For an experience you will not soon forget, come along on a sailing adventure in the Quest Series

David's book list on travel adventures

David Beaupre Why did David love this book?

Another deeply insightful book from Paul Theroux, On the Plain of Snakes explores the cultural richness and sometimes dangerous aspects of Mexico. With a forward style and charisma, he comes face to face with narcos, police, corruption, migrants, and the sometimes frightening indigenous culture. His writings are not just all darkness and gloom. He goes to great lengths to describe the importance of family in a country with virtually no social network. He talks with the educated, the poverty-stricken, and even meets the leader of the Zapatistas.  After reading On the Plain of Snakes' you will develop a new appreciation for our Mexican neighbors, particularly concerning migration and the border control issues that have dominated the US for too many years. This is a long arduous trip which Theroux makes thoroughly enjoyable. 

By Paul Theroux,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked On the Plain of Snakes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE EDWARD STANFORD AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO TRAVEL WRITING 2020

The master of contemporary travel writing, Paul Theroux, immerses himself in the beautiful and troubled heart of modern Mexico

Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A forty-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux…


Book cover of The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Stephen B. Neufeld Author Of The Blood Contingent: The Military and the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876–1911

From my list on 19th Century Mexico’s military history.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for Mexican and military history came from many sources. Wandering in my 20s in Europe and Asia honed my appreciation for the historical experience. Good friends in the Canadian military made me curious about the odd rituals and strange subcultures they inhabited. As I moved from Calgary to Vancouver to Tucson I devolved from degree to degree, studying deviance, military history, Mexican culture, and finally finishing a dissertation that combined these elements into one work. And now I happily get to inflict all of this history on my students in California.  

Stephen's book list on 19th Century Mexico’s military history

Stephen B. Neufeld Why did Stephen love this book?

This is a great book written by an accomplished scholar later in his career and confident in his research and writing. Telling the tale of the uprising, and crushing, of Tomochic village, Vanderwood zooms into the smaller details of village life and pans out to nation-level decisions with remarkable panache. In a highly enjoyable way, he brings the reader into the action without omitting the broader historical relevance. The reader may enter this for the critique of the dictator’s late nineteenth-century armies, but they will keep reading to find the fate of the unfortunate “town son of a bitch.” 

By Paul Vanderwood,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Power of God Against the Guns of Government as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the early 1890's, an armed rebellion fueled by religious fervor erupted over a wide area of northwestern Mexico. At the center of the outburst were a few hundred farmers from the village of Tomochic and a teenage folk saint named Teresa, who was ministering to thousands of people throughout the area. When the villagers proclaimed, "We will obey no one but God!," the Mexican government exiled "Santa Teresa" to the United States and trained its guns and bayonets on the farmers. A bloody confrontation ensued-God against government-that is still remembered in song, literature, films, and civic celebrations.

The tangled…


Book cover of Secure the Soul: Christian Piety and Gang Prevention in Guatemala

Chad E. Seales Author Of Religion Around Bono: Evangelical Enchantment and Neoliberal Capitalism

From my list on American evangelicalism and neoliberal religion.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've always been fascinated by the ways religion reconciles contradiction. Both of my parents were public school teachers in the panhandle of Florida, and I now work at a public university in Texas, yet the culture in which I was raised, of white evangelicalism, supported economic policies of neoliberalism that defunded public life. My interest in American religion is motivated by the question of why we participate in systems that harm us. This is an economic question, but sufficient answers must address the power of religion to shape what we see as morally good and bad. These books all do that.

Chad's book list on American evangelicalism and neoliberal religion

Chad E. Seales Why did Chad love this book?

No other book better encapsulates the evangelical spirit of neoliberal policies in the details of everyday life, including what it feels like to be arrested in the United States for being part of a gang, and ending up in a call center in Central America, only to be morally shamed for not working hard enough, as your corporate employer leverages the power of religion, and the threat of danger, to keep you trapped there. 

By Kevin Lewis O'Neill,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Secure the Soul as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"I'm not perfect," Mateo confessed, "Nobody is. But I try." Secure the Soul shuttles between the life of Mateo, a born-again, ex-gang member in Guatemala and the gang prevention programs that work so hard to keep him alive. Along the way, this poignantly written ethnography uncovers the Christian underpinnings of Central American security. In the streets of Guatemala City - amid angry lynch mobs, overcrowded prisons, and paramilitary death squads - millions of dollars empower church missions, faith-based programs, and seemingly secular security projects to prevent gang violence through the practice of Christian piety. With Guatemala increasingly defined by both…


Book cover of Graciela Iturbide's Mexico: Photographs
Book cover of The Wind That Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1942
Book cover of Photographing the Mexican Revolution: Commitments, Testimonies, Icons

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