The popular history of narco-Mexico has long been narrowly framed by the U.S. “War on Drugs.” Stereotypes overemphasize the criminal agency of celebrity drug lords. Common understanding of the narco world is rooted in mythology and misunderstanding, and the public narrative has consistently downplayed links to respected individuals and legitimate society. In Drug Wars and Covert Netherworlds sociologist and criminologist James H. Creechan draws on decades of research to paint a much more nuanced picture of the transformation of Mexico’s narco cartels. Creechan details narco cartel history, focusing on the decades since Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs. With sobering detail, Creechan unravels a web of government dependence, legitimate enterprises, covert connections, and violent infighting. He details how drug smuggling organizations have grown into powerful criminal mafias with the complicit involvement of powerful figures in civil society to create covert netherworlds. Mexico is at a moment of change—a country on the verge of transition or perdition. It can only move forward by examining its history of narco-connections spun and re-spun over the last fifty years.

Drug Wars and Covert Netherworlds describes the history of Mexican narco cartels and their regional and organizational trajectories and differences. Covering more than five decades, sociologist James H. Creechan unravels a web of government dependence, legitimate enterprises, and covert connections.

One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.

Finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Criticism By one of Mexico's greatest contemporary writers, this investigation into state violence and mourning gives voice to the political experience of collective pain. Grieving is a hybrid collection of short crónicas, journalism, and personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along the US-Mexico border. Drawing together literary theory and historical analysis, she outlines how neoliberalism, corruption, and drug trafficking—culminating in the misnamed “war on drugs”—has shaped her country. Working from and against this political context, Cristina Rivera Garza posits that collective grief is an act of resistance against state violence, and that writing is a powerful mode of seeking social justice and embodying resilience. She states: “As we write, as we work with language—the humblest and most powerful force available to us—we activate the potential of words, phrases, sentences. Writing as we grieve, grieving as we write: a practice able to create refuge from the open. Writing with others. Grieving like someone who takes refuge from the open. Grieving, which is always a radically different mode of writing.” “A lucid, poignant collection of essays and poetry. . . . deeply hopeful, ultimately love letters to writing itself, and to the power of language to overcome the silence that impunity imposes.” —New York Times Book Review "For all the losses tallied, the pieces are imbued with optimism and an activist’s passion for reshaping the world." —The New Yorker

Joined by award-winning Mexican journalist Luis Nájera, leading organized-crime author Peter Edwards introduces a motley assortment of millennial bikers, gangsters and Mafia whose bloody trail of murders and schemes gone wrong led to the arrival in Canada of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations: the drug cartels of Mexico. A man watching the Euro Cup on a restaurant patio is shot dead on a busy Sunday afternoon in Toronto. Another dies in a sidewalk ambush just outside a bus-tling college campus. Two men in a Vancouver hotel lobby are gunned down in an attack that sends an American soccer star scrambling for cover. In Mexico, a Canadian is killed at a Nuevo Vallarta coffee shop, his death barely registering amidst the terrifying death tolls of President Calderón’s war on drugs and the cartels’ response; while a Montreal cop is beaten within an inch of his life in a Playa del Carmen nightclub. An infamous heckler from an NBA Toronto Raptors game turns up dead in a bullet-riddled car in a midtown lane-way. Throughout the 2010s, these and other disparate acts of violence entered the public awareness like iso-lated tragedies—but there was nothing isolated about them. In this masterly investigation, veteran journalists Peter Edwards and Luis Nájera introduce readers to the common cause of a near-decade of chaos. Meet the Wolfpack, millennial-aged gangsters from across the spectrum of Canada’s underworld. Vying to fast-track their way into the criminal void left by the death of Montreal godfather Vito Rizzuto, the Wolfpack sought advantage in a steady supply of cocaine from El Chapo Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel, among the deadliest and most far-reaching of criminal organizations. The juniors had just stepped into the big leagues. This is the roiling landscape of The Wolfpack, a brilliant examination of a time of criminal disruption and rapid adaptation, when one gang’s unchecked ambition unwittingly gave away the most hotly contested corner of the Canadian underworld without a fight. Brazen criminal disruptors or entitled upstarts looking to get rich without paying their dues--whatever you think of them, you will never forget the Wolfpack.

Having followed Mexico's cartels for years, border security expert Sylvia Longmire takes us deep into the heart of their world to witness a dangerous underground that will do whatever it takes to deliver drugs to a willing audience of American consumers. The cartels have grown increasingly bold in recent years, building submarines to move up the coast of Central America and digging elaborate tunnels that both move drugs north and carry cash and U.S. high-powered assault weapons back to fuel the drug war. Channeling her long experience working on border issues, Longmire brings to life the very real threat of Mexican cartels operating not just along the southwest border, but deep inside every corner of the United States. She also offers real solutions to the critical problems facing Mexico and the United States, including programs to deter youth in Mexico from joining the cartels and changing drug laws on both sides of the border.

A massive wave of violence has rippled across Mexico over the past decade. In the western state of Sinaloa, the birthplace of modern drug trafficking, ordinary citizens live in constant fear of being “taken”—kidnapped or held against their will by armed men, whether criminals, police, or both. This remarkable collection of firsthand accounts by prize-winning journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas provides a uniquely human perspective on life in Sinaloa during the drug war. The reality of the Mexican drug war, a conflict fueled by uncertainty and fear, is far more complex than the images conjured in popular imagination. Often missing from news reports is the perspective of ordinary people—migrant workers, schoolteachers, single mothers, businessmen, teenagers, petty criminals, police officers, and local journalists—people whose worlds center not on drugs or illegal activity but on survival and resilience, truth and reconciliation. Building on a rich tradition of testimonial literature, Valdez Cárdenas recounts in gripping detail how people deal not only with the constant threat of physical violence but also with the fear, uncertainty, and guilt that afflict survivors and witnesses. Mexican journalists who dare expose the drug war’s inconvenient political and social realities are censored and smeared, murdered, and “disappeared.” This is precisely why we need to hear from seasoned local reporters like Valdez Cárdenas who write about the places where they live, rely on a network of trusted sources built over decades, and tell the stories behind the headline-grabbing massacres and scandals. In his informative introduction to the volume, translator Everard Meade orients the reader to the broader armed conflict in Mexico and explains the unique role of Sinaloa as its epicenter. Reports on border politics and infamous drug traffickers may obscure the victims’ suffering. The Taken helps ensure that their stories will not be forgotten or suppressed.

Through an examination of violent neighborhoods this book shows how criminals affect local politics in Colombia, Brazil, and Jamaica.

Eclipse of the Assassins investigates the sensational 1984 murder of Mexico's most influential newspaper columnist, Manuel Buendía, and how that crime reveals the lethal hand of the U.S. government in Mexico and Central America during the final decades of the twentieth century.

The “moving” true story of a woman fighting to give a group of chimpanzees a second chance at life (People). In 1997, Gloria Grow started a sanctuary for chimps retired from biomedical research on her farm outside Montreal. For the indomitable Gloria, caring for thirteen great apes is like presiding over a maximum-security prison, a Zen sanctuary, an old folks’ home, and a New York deli during the lunchtime rush all rolled into one. But she is first and foremost creating a refuge for her troubled charges, a place where they can recover and begin to trust humans again. Hoping to win some of this trust, journalist Andrew Westoll spent months at Fauna Farm as a volunteer, and in this “incisive [and] affecting” book, he vividly recounts his time in the chimp house and the histories of its residents (Kirkus Reviews). He arrives with dreams of striking up an immediate friendship with the legendary Tom, the wise face of the Great Ape Protection Act, but Tom seems all too content to ignore him. Gradually, though, old man Tommie and the rest of the “troop” begin to warm toward Westoll as he learns the routines of life at the farm and realizes just how far the chimps have come. Seemingly simple things like grooming, establishing friendships and alliances, and playing games with the garden hose are all poignant testament to the capacity of these animals to heal. Brimming with empathy and entertaining stories of Gloria and her charges, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is an absorbing, bighearted book that grapples with questions of just what we owe to the animals who are our nearest genetic relations. “A powerful look at how we treat our closest relatives.” —The Plain Dealer “I knew the prison-like conditions of the medical research facility from which Gloria rescued these chimpanzees; when I visited them at their new sanctuary I was moved to tears. . . . Andrew Westoll is a born storyteller: The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, written with empathy and skill, tenderness and humour, involves us in a world few understand. And leaves us marveling at the ways in which chimpanzees are so like us, and why they deserve our help and are entitled to our respect.” —Dr. Jane Goodall “This book will make you think deeply about our relationship with great apes. It amazed me to discover the behaviors and feelings of the chimpanzees.” —Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation