Featuring a new preface by the author, this brilliant and eminently readable cultural history looks at Mexican life during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, from 1876 to 1911. At that time the modernization that Mexico underwent produced a fierce struggle between the traditional and the new, exacerbating class antagonisms in the process. The noted historian William H. Beezley illuminates many facets of everyday Mexican life lying at the heart of this conflict and change, including sports, storytelling, health care, technology, and the traditional Easter-time Judas burnings that became a primary focus of strife during those years.

This updated volume provides a teacher's guide, available on the University of Nebraska Press website, offering a manual of internet links, additional readings, and practice experiences that can be used in the classroom or by anyone who wants to go beyond the chapters of this book.

William H. Beezley is a professor of history at the University of Arizona. He is the author or editor of dozens of books, including Mexicans in Revolution, 1910-1946, with Colin MacLachlan (Nebraska, 2009), Mexico's Crucial Century, 1810-1910: An Introduction (Nebraska, 2010), and Mexico in World History. Beezley is the editor in chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia for Latin America. In 2017 the Mexican government awarded him its Ohtili Medal.