The General & The Jaguar by Eileen Welsome
Category: History Grade: D
I tried - I really tried. This book about Pancho Villa and the tail end of the Mexican Revolution should have been good. Its a really interesting period of history. Villa is one of the those larger than life figures that everybody knows but nobody really knows much about. To some, he was a Mexican hero, but his vanity, gratuitous murder and destruction leads to a different opinion. So when I saw a book about Villa and about Pershing's hunt for him, written but a former Pulizter Prize winner, I jumped at it.
Well, I lasted about 125 pages. This book is so filled with totally meaningless details that it gets boring. The writer is trying hard to be "literary", but her prose comes across as just plain silly. I'll give you one example and then not waste any more of your time. Apparently, then night that Villa decided to cross the border and attack an American city (Columbus, NM), the weather was dry. Instead of just saying "it wasn't raining", Welsome says "No mediating layer of moisture existed between the troops and the night sky...". I mean, come on!
Enough said.
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