To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War

Gibler (Mexico Unconquered) documents Mexico's drug war, its enormous profits and grievous human costs, in taut prose and harrowing detail. As the demand for recreational drugs spikes in the U.S., money from the drug trade has become Mexico's largest source of income. Gibler's front-line reportage coupled with first-rate analysis gives an uncommonly vivid and nuanced picture of a society riddled and enervated by corruption, shootouts, and raids, where murder is the "most popular method of conflict resolution." Since 2006, 34,000 Mexicans have been killed; "death is a part of the overhead, a business expense," observes Gibler. Even the hired killers, often impoverished teenagers who are paid about $300 a week, are executed by the very people who hire them, after their "job" is done. At great personal risk, the author unearths stories the mainstream media doesn't%E2%80%94or is too afraid%E2%80%94to cover, and gives voice to those who have been silenced or whose stories have been forgotten%E2%80%94murdered journalists in Reynosa, students slain in the streets, and even a man who was killed because, tired of finding dead bodies outside his house, he had hung a sign reading "Prohibited: Littering and Dumping Corpses." (June)