From a 1995 winner of the American Book Award (Rebellion From the Roots: Indian Uprising in Chiapas) comes a rip-roaring review of Mexico's 500-year resistance to annexation. Among the many characters in this people's history of Mexico you will meet:

* Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, 11 times president of Mexico, who threw the "Mexican War" to the U.S. invaders 150 years ago; * Doroteo Arango, aka Pancho Villa, who so perplexed Woodrow Wilson that the U.S. president had a stroke.

And in the other corner:

* Thomas Jefferson, the founding father of U.S. expansionism, who once advocated: "our confederation must be the nest from which all America north and south is peopled..." * and James Sheffield, U.S. ambassador and rabid Yalee, who believed Mexico's problems could be resolved if they would just play American football. * The Annexation of Mexico also picks its way through contemporary mine fields: the Reagan administration's little-known offer to buy Baja California for $105 billion; the peso collapse and Clinton's bail-out of U.S. investors; and the pungent corruption in Mexico's anti-drug hierarchy.