100 books like The Worm in the Wheat

By Timothy J. Henderson,

Here are 100 books that The Worm in the Wheat fans have personally recommended if you like The Worm in the Wheat. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Zapata and the Mexican Revolution

Alejandro Quintana Ph.D. Author Of Pancho Villa: A Biography

From my list on biographies of the Mexican Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in Mexico listening to my father´s stories about the Mexican revolution. His storytelling abilities drew me in as he described his childhood memories and those of his father, who lived through the revolution. That's why I became a historian writing about the Mexican Revolution with a preference for biographies. As the Latin Americanist historian at St. John's University in New York City, I've written two books: Maximino Avila Camacho and the One Party State, Pancho Villa: A Biography, and edited A Brief History of Mexico by Lynn V. Foster. I hope you enjoy the list of books on significant personalities that shaped the first major social revolution of the twentieth century.

Alejandro's book list on biographies of the Mexican Revolution

Alejandro Quintana Ph.D. Why did Alejandro love this book?

I was immediately hooked by Dr. John Womack's Zapata when I read it in graduate school. His combined storytelling and scholarship abilities are precisely what made me fall in love with history. Furthermore, this book inspired me to write Pancho Villa to complement the narrative of the revolution. Because, while Pancho Villa is the revolutionary leader fighting for the rights of mixed-race working class of the Mexican north, Zapata is the revolutionary leader committed to restoring the dignity and the ancestral lands of the indigenous population of the Mexican south. Here, Womack masterfully weaves Zapata's life with the Mexican Revolution. An unquestionably classic, this book is a praised scholarly work that reads like a novel.

By John Womack,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

This essential volume recalls the activities of Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919), a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution; he formed and commanded an important revolutionary force during this conflict. Womack focuses attention on Zapata's activities and his home state of Morelos during the Revolution. Zapata quickly rose from his position as a peasant leader in a village seeking agrarian reform. Zapata's dedication to the cause of land rights made him a hero to the people. Womack describes the contributing factors and conditions preceding the Mexican Revolution, creating a narrative that examines political and agrarian transformations on local and national levels.


Book cover of The Death of Artemio Cruz

Alejandro Quintana Ph.D. Author Of Pancho Villa: A Biography

From my list on biographies of the Mexican Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in Mexico listening to my father´s stories about the Mexican revolution. His storytelling abilities drew me in as he described his childhood memories and those of his father, who lived through the revolution. That's why I became a historian writing about the Mexican Revolution with a preference for biographies. As the Latin Americanist historian at St. John's University in New York City, I've written two books: Maximino Avila Camacho and the One Party State, Pancho Villa: A Biography, and edited A Brief History of Mexico by Lynn V. Foster. I hope you enjoy the list of books on significant personalities that shaped the first major social revolution of the twentieth century.

Alejandro's book list on biographies of the Mexican Revolution

Alejandro Quintana Ph.D. Why did Alejandro love this book?

This book is one of my all-time favorites. The Death of Artemio Cruz is a historical novel by one of the most acclaimed literary figures of the Spanish language, Carlos Fuentes. It is a captivating narrative of intertwined memories experienced by Cruz while on his deathbed; this novel is a harsh condemnation of the post-revolutionary political class. It shows the path of idealist revolutionaries becoming corrupt politicians once in power. While a work of fiction, the book describes real corrupt and abusive attitudes and straight-out crimes committed by numerous revolutionary leaders turned politicians. There were many Artemio Cruz among the revolution leaders, which helps explain why the revolution failed to achieve real social change. 

By Carlos Fuentes, Alfred MacAdam (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Death of Artemio Cruz as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As the novel opens, Artemio Cruz, the all-powerful newspaper magnate and land baron, lies confined to his bed and, in dreamlike flashes, recalls the pivotal episodes of his life. Carlos Fuentes manipulates the ensuing kaleidoscope of images with dazzling inventiveness, layering memory upon memory, from Cruz's heroic campaigns during the Mexican Revolution, through his relentless climb from poverty to wealth, to his uneasy death. Perhaps Fuentes's masterpiece, The Death of Artemio Cruz is a haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico.


Book cover of Porfirio Diaz

Alejandro Quintana Ph.D. Author Of Pancho Villa: A Biography

From my list on biographies of the Mexican Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in Mexico listening to my father´s stories about the Mexican revolution. His storytelling abilities drew me in as he described his childhood memories and those of his father, who lived through the revolution. That's why I became a historian writing about the Mexican Revolution with a preference for biographies. As the Latin Americanist historian at St. John's University in New York City, I've written two books: Maximino Avila Camacho and the One Party State, Pancho Villa: A Biography, and edited A Brief History of Mexico by Lynn V. Foster. I hope you enjoy the list of books on significant personalities that shaped the first major social revolution of the twentieth century.

Alejandro's book list on biographies of the Mexican Revolution

Alejandro Quintana Ph.D. Why did Alejandro love this book?

I love this book because it shows the real complexities of the socioeconomic realities that Mexicans experienced leading to the revolution. By focusing on the life of Porfirio Diaz, Paul Garner offers a nuanced narrative challenging six decades of the revolutionary government and most historians consistently condemning Diaz as an unredeemable tyrant. Instead, Garner offers a more realistic explanation of the achievements and failures of the dictator responsible for simultaneously resurrecting the Mexican economy and producing the biggest social upheaval in Mexican history.

By Paul Garner,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The fall of Porfirio Diaz has traditionally been presented as a watershed between old and new: an old style repressive and conservative government, and the more democratic and representative system that flowered in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Now this view is being challenged by a new generation of historians, who point out that Diaz originally rose to power in alliance with anti-conservative forces and was a modernising force as well as a dictator. Drawing together the threads of this revisionist reading of the Porfiriato, Garner reassesses a political career that spanned more than forty years, and examines the…


Book cover of Alvaro Obregón: Power and Revolution in Mexico, 1911-1920

Alejandro Quintana Ph.D. Author Of Pancho Villa: A Biography

From my list on biographies of the Mexican Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in Mexico listening to my father´s stories about the Mexican revolution. His storytelling abilities drew me in as he described his childhood memories and those of his father, who lived through the revolution. That's why I became a historian writing about the Mexican Revolution with a preference for biographies. As the Latin Americanist historian at St. John's University in New York City, I've written two books: Maximino Avila Camacho and the One Party State, Pancho Villa: A Biography, and edited A Brief History of Mexico by Lynn V. Foster. I hope you enjoy the list of books on significant personalities that shaped the first major social revolution of the twentieth century.

Alejandro's book list on biographies of the Mexican Revolution

Alejandro Quintana Ph.D. Why did Alejandro love this book?

I was always fascinated by the story of Alvaro Obregon—this apparently unassuming general of the revolution slowly but surely knocking out one by one anyone getting on his way to become Mexico´s strongman. Not a minor feat considering that these include powerful and charismatic titans such as Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza. An ingenious strategist general and an uncanny political operator, Obregon is the man who finally brings peace and stability to Mexico after a long decade of unimaginable violence. Linda Hall beautifully threads the history of the revolution with the slow but effective rise of Obregon from a modest farmer to the presidency of Mexico.

By Linda B. Hall,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The Mexican Revolution produced some romantic and heroic figures. In Mexico at the time, however, one man loomed large as the embodiment of revolutionary goals and the one leader able to take the country from strife into peace. That man was Alvaro Obregón.

Less well-known to North Americans than his contemporaries and sometime allies Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, Obregón eventually formed the first stable government of post-revolutionary Mexico. Stories of his daring and near-invincibility abounded as he led revolutionary forces against the usurper Huerta, then against the "bandit" elements within the Revolution itself. Throughout the period of fighting, however,…


Book cover of Autocracy and Redistribution: The Politics of Land Reform

Scott Mainwaring Author Of Democracy in Hard Places

From my list on democracy today from a scholar of democracy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I became deeply interested in democracy and authoritarianism at an early age because of my experiences living under military dictatorships in Argentina in 1971-72 and in Brazil from 1980- 82, and also my experience as an undergraduate living in a democracy that failed in profound ways (Argentina, 1975). I saw first-hand that authoritarianism can affect daily life in hugely negative ways but also that democracy can fail in dismal ways. Reading and producing scholarship about democracy and authoritarianism, and teaching these subjects, became central to my immensely satisfying life’s work.

Scott's book list on democracy today from a scholar of democracy

Scott Mainwaring Why did Scott love this book?

What I most admire about Autocracy and Redistribution is that it brings the best of contemporary political science to bear on questions of deep scholarly and real-world importance: what explains redistributive land reform? Albertus argues that redistributive land reform is much more likely when 1) top-level state leaders and large landowners have diverging interests and 2) institutional barriers to achieving large-scale reform are lower. Albertus shows that redistributive land reform is more likely under dictatorship than democracy. 

By Michael Albertus,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

When and why do countries redistribute land to the landless? What political purposes does land reform serve, and what place does it have in today's world? A long-standing literature dating back to Aristotle and echoed in important recent works holds that redistribution should be both higher and more targeted at the poor under democracy. Yet comprehensive historical data to test this claim has been lacking. This book shows that land redistribution - the most consequential form of redistribution in the developing world - occurs more often under dictatorship than democracy. It offers a novel theory of land reform and develops…


Book cover of The Rice Sprout Song

Alice Poon Author Of Tales of Ming Courtesans

From my list on novels that take place in China.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born and raised in Hong Kong, I received a fully bilingual (English and Chinese) education and also learned French in my youth. Since the release of my two historical Chinese novels: The Green Phoenix and Tales of Ming Courtesans, nostalgia for the magical world of wuxia fiction, which I grew up with, has spurred my desire to write wuxia stories following Jin Yong’s style, but with a mythical slant. Overall, my fiction writing has been influenced by Jin Yong, Emile Zola, and the wuxia/xianxia media.

Alice's book list on novels that take place in China

Alice Poon Why did Alice love this book?

This is a heart-wrenching novel about hunger and starvation in the early 1950s in a Southern China village. The book title implies the joy of harvest, which has a rhetorical effect as it runs counter to the book theme. Its metaphor for hunger is watery gruel that the rural poor eat for every meal as they slowly starve. The story is about the impending great famine after the Communist Party introduces the land reform policies and how villagers suffer in silence atrocious government abuse. 

This novel is a must-read if you want to understand what starvation feels like.

By Eileen Chang,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Rice Sprout Song as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first of Eileen Chang's novels to be written in English, The Rice-Sprout Song portrays the horror and absurdity that the land-reform movement brings to a southern village in China during the early 1950s. Contrary to the hopes of the peasants in this story, the redistribution of land does not mean an end to hunger. Man-made and natural disasters bring about the threat of famine, while China's involvement in the Korean War further deepens the peasants' misery. Chang's chilling depiction of the peasants' desperate attempts to survive both the impending famine and government abuse makes for spellbinding reading. Her critique…


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 Pedro Páramo

Lois Parkinson Zamora Author Of Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community

From my list on capturing the magic of magical realism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I fell in love with Latin American literature when I was in the Peace Corps in the late 1960s in the highlands of Colombia. My husband and I were in a program of rural community development. The Colombian writer, Gabriel García Márquez, published his now-famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, while we were there (in 1967), and when I read it, I said, “This is the kind of fiction that I want to keep on reading and studying forever!” And so I have. I am on the faculty of the University of Houston, where I teach Latin American literature and history, including a course on Magical Realism. 

Lois' book list on capturing the magic of magical realism

Lois Parkinson Zamora Why did Lois love this book?

This short novel is by a Mexican writer and takes place underground. At first, we cannot tell who is living and who is dead, but we eventually accept the fact that the characters are ghosts. 

The ghosts come and go, remembering their past lives together. They remind each other of the events of the Mexican Revolution that they lived through, and they especially remember the strongman in the village. Pedro Páramo runs things with an iron hand, and he also pines for a woman who is beyond his control—the only thing he wants that he can’t have.

The voices in this novel are like a chorus of whispers breathing the picture of a poor village. I love the beauty and mystery of the writing. Many Mexicans consider this their greatest novel, and for all readers, it is a small masterpiece. 

By Juan Rulfo, Margaret Sayers Peden (translator),

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Pedro Páramo as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner, Fred Whitehead Award for the Best Design of a Trade Book from Texas Institute of Letters Western Books Exhibition Selection, Rounce & Coffin Club, 2003 Deserted villages of rural Mexico, where images and memories of the past linger like unquiet ghosts, haunted the imaginations of two artists-writer Juan Rulfo and photographer Josephine Sacabo. In one such village of the mind, Comala, Rulfo set his classic novel Pedro Paramo, a dream-like tale that intertwines a man's quest to find his lost father and reclaim his patrimony with the father's obsessive love for a woman who will not be possessed-Susana San…


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 The City of Palaces

Mario Acevedo Author Of The Nymphos of Rocky Flats

From my list on illuminating historical truths through fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love learning about history, and the more I learn, the more I appreciate my place in this world. While military history, particularly from pre-WW1 to the end of WW2, was what made me first plant my nose in a book, I can geek out on pretty much any historical period: the rise of human civilization, Rome, the conquest of the New World, the development of airplanes. But it’s the personal element that most draws me in, and the fact that we humans remain fundamentally the same in how we cope with another through the ages. It’s through fiction that we see the past in a way that makes sense.

Mario's book list on illuminating historical truths through fiction

Mario Acevedo Why did Mario love this book?

I’ve tried several times to understand the Mexican Revolution, with its cast of martyrs and rouges scrambling in a violent tornado of noble intentions and bloody treachery. Nava artfully demonstrates his chops as a writer by paring this seemingly incomprehensible sweep of Mexican history into an accessible and compelling narrative.

His characters are complicated and nuanced—Nava gives us no easy answers—and we watch them flail for salvation and fleeting promises even as society collapses around them.

By Michael Nava,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In the years before the Mexican Revolution, Mexico is ruled by a tiny elite that apes European culture, grows rich from foreign investment, and prizes racial purity. The vast majority of Mexicans, who are native or of mixed native and Spanish blood, are politically powerless and slowly starving to death. Presiding over this corrupt system is Don Porfirio Diaz, the ruthless and inscrutable president of the Republic.

Against this backdrop, The City of Palaces opens in a Mexico City jail with the meeting of Miguel Sarmiento and Alicia Gavilan. Miguel is a principled young doctor, only recently returned from Europe…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Mexico, the Mexican Revolution, and New Mexico?

Mexico 230 books
New Mexico 61 books