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To Die on Your Feet: The Life, Times, and Writings of Praxedis G. Guerrero. By WARD S. ALBRO. Forth Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiii, I98 pp. Cloth, $25.00. For twenty years the best study of Praxedis G. Guerrero-anarchist, writer, poet, organizer, warrior, and member of the inner circle of Ricardo Flores Magon's Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM)-has been Piero Ferrua's Italian-language Gli anarchici nella rivoluzione messicana: Praxedis G. Guerrero (Ragusa, I976). Ward Albro, combining research in the Mexican Foreign Relations archive along with his findings from the United States Department of Justice files, and having translated a significant collection of Guerrero's writings, now brings us the first English-language treatment of this relatively little-known Mexican revolutionary. Making some of Guerrero's writings accessible in English is valuable. Unfortunately, however, this book suffers from organizational and historiographical flaws that seriously limit its usefulness.
Organizationally, Albro has divided his study into two parts. The first consists of a 67-page, 4-chapter biography; the second comprises thematic essays (chapters 5-7), and a conclusion (chapter 8), followed by "selected writings" in translation (chapter 9). Part II needlessly repeats much of part I, and the whole should have been integrated rather than fragmented. The discussion of anarchism in chapter 6, for example,...