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)