How often does one read a book so much that it might come apart? Well this is such a one. It is so relevent to what I have been researching for the last many years that I gladly bought it for full retail when it was first published rather than wait for a remainder sale or the paperback. I was a pecunios person in the sixties!. Now as to the value of this book. Clendenen has written two monumental works concerning the Mexican Border. He began his military career riding the border just after WW I. After his retirement he went on to earn his post graduate degrees. His other work The United States and Pancho Villa is a voluminous study of three years and a half of relations. 1913 and 1915 when the Mexican Civil War took place. THis book is much different. The whole gamut of U.S. Mexican border incidents from the conquest of 1846 to 1923 is covered herein. One of the most valuable features is that the author mined thoroughly several of the major "big slicks" --general interest publications of the time for contemporary reporting and commentary. I have been extending this work since to others. These include such once famous periodicals as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. Each chapter is exceptionally well written and concise and reads well. This book can be compared well with that by John S.D. Eisenhower (see my review)-Intervention. But that of course covers a much shorter period. The general reader can well find much of interest on border raiders, bandits, and the Punitive Expedition. It is a pity it was ever allowed to go out of print. It was published in the fine series Wars of the United States by MacMillan.