Unrevolutionary Mexico: The Birth of a Strange Dictatorship. By Paul Gillingham. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. Pp. 464. Abbreviations. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $45.00 cloth

A chapter on development from the vantage point of the two states helps to dismantle the myth of the Mexican Miracle by demonstrating how the mechanisms of corruption siphoned off much of the speculative capital. [...]the last chapter posits some answers to an important question suggested by its title: why did Mexico not become a military dictatorship? The sheer volume of evidence presented in this daunting history shows how the sausage is made, or how using “the language of democracy, but with the unequivocal meaning of authoritarian centralization” (280) came to be the modus operandi of the PRI.