I am not an authority on the life of Emiliano Zapata and realize his life was and is entangled in much myth. Nevertheless, I feel his life is worth reading about and there is no better strat than with Womack's account (or perhaps Samuel Brunk's). Great book written about a Mexican legend.

In every field of endeavor, in every activity known to Man, whether sailboarding or physics, hairdressing or chipmunk catching, there are people who excel, people who go far beyond the rest. They reach the epitome while we mere mortals look up from below and marvel. So, when you have read the 526 pages of Womack Jr.'s book [not counting the appendices], you can tell yourself that you have read THE book on Zapata and his role in the Mexican Revolution. The author used every source available, he interviewed all those who were left alive to talk. I wonder if any new printed sources will ever be found ? Certainly everyone who played a role, however insignificant, in those long ago days of 1909-1920 is now dead, making new interviews extremely unlikely. This is a work of art, a work of love, and a vast labor that surely took a few years off the life of the author, not to mention breaking some relationships. It is the definitive work so far on the subject. If you want to know the story of why and how Emiliano Zapata, a once insignificant small town horse trader and farmer, became a legendary rebel whose name resounds throughout Mexico today---a man who fought unwaveringly for the rights of small farmers and villagers to the land they worked---then you have no choice but to read this volume. This is the epitome, this is the story in unbelievable detail; political, economic, social, military. And yet, Zapata himself almost disappears in the vast bulk of detailed historical and interpretive observations. It is not so much a work on an individual as on the whole period in a small area of Mexico.

If you want a general history of the Mexican Revolution because you are just beginning to think about the subject, if you are looking for concise explanations, then this is not the book you need. ZAPATA AND THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION is for college courses on Latin American history, or for the scholar who wants every detail in Zapata's long struggle, for the person who wants to know what the peasants and small town dwellers of the state of Morelos went through in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The work is impressive, not only for its vast wealth of detail, but for its compassion and sympathy for the aims of those people who made tremendous sacrifices for their cause. Good photographs, a good map of Morelos. If you are not that interested in Mexico, but would just like to see what a great, academic, social history book could be like, I can recommend this book without hesitation. At times, the detail is overwhelming, a vast body of characters and place names that can hardly be absorbed. [There are around 90 footnotes to each chapter, sometimes more.] But, if you want to know the whole story, this is the book for you. It is the best.

This is one of the most important works of Latin American history, a highly readable account of the peasant uprising led by Emiliano Zapata in 1914. Womack's book is a social history, focusing on the long struggle of peasants in Morelos state, just south of Mexico City, to keep their communal lands, a struggle that became especially bitter with the encroachment of capitalist-style agriculture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a story of isolated and bloody uprisings, and of village elders who hid the papers granting the land to the campesinos (old parchments issued by the Spanih crown) by burying them under churches during times of war and turmoil. It is the story of Emiliano Zapata, a humble peasant who ends up leading a rebel army that takes Mexico City, and of his eventual betrayal and martyrdom in a hail of bullets. I read this book 15 years ago but the images from it are still etched in my memory. Read it if you want to understand Mexico and its history.