Deadly Divide

“Mendoza focuses on how the natural world shaped ideas about race, gender, and security. In so doing, she unearths surprising origins of the modern-day immigration debate.”—Women’s Environmental History Network

“A triumph of intellect and compassion. Mendoza tells a century-long tale of the entire US-Mexico border that no one else has.”—Susan Lee Johnson, Harry Reid Endowed Chair for the History of the Intermountain West, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

“Equally compelling and disturbing, Mendoza’s study illuminates the extensive roots of today’s border control apparatus and crises.”—Julian Lim, author of Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

“Many historians have written about the Mexican border, but they have not seen what Mary E. Mendoza reveals in this remarkable and original environmental history.”—Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University

“Accessible history of the highest order, Deadly Divide is distinguished by its humility and, even more, its humaneness.”—Thomas G. Andrews, author of Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War

“In adding nonhuman life to the history of the border, Mendoza makes one of the most important contributions that I have read in a while.”—María E. Montoya, associate professor of history, New York University

“Brilliantly researched and clearly written. Mendoza shows, in exquisite detail, the environmental, geopolitical, and social dimensions of the history of border-making.”—Virginia Scharff, University of New Mexico