Amexica: War Along the Borderline

“Vulliamy, with a mix of irony and pathos, writes like a latter-day Graham Greene. . . . Like all good travel writing, Amexica is vivid, colorful, and exotic, filled with stirring vignettes and larger-than-life characters.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Extraordinary.” —Vanity Fair

In 2009, Ed Vulliamy traveled two thousand miles along the frontier from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Tijuana to Matamoros, a journey through kaleidoscopic landscape of corruption and all-out civil war. He describes in revelatory detail the dreaded narco gangs; the smuggling of people, weapons, and illegal drugs; and the interrelated economies of drugs and the ruthless, systematic murder of young women in Ciudad Juárez. Amexica takes us far beyond today’s headlines. It is a street-level portrait, by turns horrific and sublime, of a place and people in a time of war as much as of the war itself, “an impressively rendered, nightmare-inducing account” (Kirkus Reviews, Top 25 Books of 2010).

“An engrossing travelogue . . . a vivid, disturbing dispatch from a very wild frontier.” —Publishers Weekly

“Vulliamy paints a terrifying and authoritative portrait of violence.” —The Wall Street Journal

“An absorbing odyssey . . . Vulliamy’s reporting is faultlessly brave. . . . The scenery and characters he meets are brought alive with vividness and intensity.” —The Telegraph (London)