American novelist Charles Fleming Embree set his first novel at Lake Chapala

Embree was born in Princeton, Indiana, October 1, 1874, the son of lawyer David Franklin Embree, member of a prominent pioneer family, and Mary Fleming Embree. He was educated in Princeton public schools and entered Wabash College in the fall of 1892. After three years he left college without graduating to devote himself to writing, […]

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A Visit to Don Otavio: A Traveller’s Tale from Mexico by Sybille Bedford

Cogan’s Reviews The first thing I should say about this book is that it was originally published more than half a century ago, in 1953. I mention that out front just so no reader assumes it is yet another recent travel book about Mexico. However, it’s a good one and it’s easy to see that […]

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Candelaria’s Cookbook

Candelaria is back, with her special logic, folk wisdom and Mexican home-style recipes in the bilingual ‘Las Recetas de Candelaria,’ or ‘Candelaria’s Cookbook.’ Readers of Dane Chandos’ charming ‘Village in the Sun’, about life around Lake Chapala in the ‘40s, will recall Candelaria as the cook who ‘could carry in her head scores and scores of recipes.’ […]

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Early Fusion Food: Inside A Colonial Mexican Kitchen

One of the rewarding aspects of investigating the history and evolution of Mexico’s rich and varied cuisine is the availability of authentic sources. The Spanish chroniclers took painstaking notes on nearly every aspect of indigenous life upon their arrival, including food and cooking techniques, and continued, after the Conquest, to keep household journals, diaries and […]

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Inside Mexico: Living, Travelling and Doing Business in a Changing Society

Cogan’s Reviews A Mexico book by Paula Heusinkveld This is a very useful book for explaining Mexicans to the rest of us North Americans. Professor Heusinkveld has set out to cover Mexican attitudes to business relationships, social interactions, culture, customs and values and has largely succeeded in describing our neighbors in understandable ways. I would […]

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Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the U.S. – Mexico Border by Sebastian Rotella Norton

Cogan’s Reviews “The action never stops at the border. There is no other place like it on the globe. The international boundary stretches for almost two thousand miles, from the Pacific Ocean through the mountains, the deserts, the valleys of the Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico. The region is a vast world unto […]

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