Los Zetas represent a new generation of ruthless, sadistic pragmatists in Mexico and Central America who are impelling a tectonic shift among drug trafficking organizations in the Americas. Mexico's marines have taken down the cartel's top leaders; nevertheless, these capos and their desperados have forever altered how criminal business is conducted in the Western Hemisphere. This narrative brings an unprecedented level of detail in describing how Los Zetas became Mexico's most diabolical criminal organization before suffering severe losses.

In their heyday, Los Zetas controlled networks of American police, politicians, judges, and businessmen. The Mexican government is losing its "war on drugs," despite the military, technical, and intelligence resources provided by its northern neighbor. Subcontracted street gangs operate in hundreds of US cities, purchasing weapons, delivering product, executing targeted foes, and bribing the US Border Patrol. Despite crippling losses Los Zetas still dominate Nuevo Laredo, the major portal for legal and illegal bilateral commerce. They also work hand-in-glove with the underworld in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, as well as with gangs like the Maras Salvatruchas.

A new generation of ruthless pragmatists carves a parallel state across Mexico and Central America. Most powerful among them is Los Zetas, ruled over by Heriberto Lazcano, known as The Executioner. Lazcano and his men have forced a tectonic shift among drug trafficking organizations in the Americas, forever altering how criminal business is conducted in the Western Hemisphere. This narrative brings an unprecedented level of detail in describing how Los Zetas became Mexico's most diabolical criminal organization.

Criminals control networks of police, politician, and businessmen spanning the American continent. The Mexican government is losing its "war on drugs," despite the military, technical, and intelligence resources provided by its northern neighbor. Subcontracted street gangs operate in hundreds of US cities, purchasing weapons, delivering product, executing targeted foes, and bribing the US Border Patrol.

Despite suffering severe losses that would cripple any major corporation, Los Zetas continues to operate internationally in criminal markets. Many of the poor and destitute across the region cooperate with Los Zetas, sometimes for money, often because of coercion.

John C. Calhoun was a major actor in the political history of nineteenth-century America. His dramatic career will always be of interest. However, Calhoun is equally important as a political thinker who continues to elicit widespread interest from the most diverse points of the ideological spectrum. "The Essential Calhoun" presents a full-fledged selection of speeches and writings taken from the entire forty-year span of Calhoun's public career and from many varieties of occasions, public and private. For the first time, it is possible to appreciate Calhoun fully and to consider his thought within the compass of a single volume. Calhoun is known to posterity as the premier defender of the Old South and slavery and as the theorist of the concurrent majority. His contemporaries knew him as much else, including a political economist and foreign policy authority. As the range of writings shows, he was a valuable and often prophetic commentator. Calhoun's thought testifies to a deep and abiding concern with moral and ethical issues that confront a government resting on the consent of the people. The fundamental question with which he wrestles in all his works is how to achieve and maintain a proper balance between power and liberty in a democratic society. By providing the most representative compendium of his thought, "The Essential Calhoun" invites the reader to engage in this exercise of applying the moral imagination realistically to the public business of America. Historians, American studies specialists, economists, and political scientists will find this volume indispensible.

"Generally, the Southern writers allowed into 'mainstream' publications are either those who have made a career out of libeling the home folks or those too important to be ignored. Amazingly and refreshingly, Chronicles has not only treated Southern subjects abundantly and fairly but has welcomed many Southern writers who are not among the great but who have something to say and can say it well." So writes Clyde Wilson in his Introduction to Garden of the Beaux Arts, the first volume of Chronicles of the South, a collection of articles from Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.Published in Rockford, Illinois, Chronicles has nevertheless been home to some of the best writing on the South over the last quarter of a century. Volume One features contributions by Southern novelists and poets, including Donald Davidson, Madison Smartt Bell, Fred Chappell, and Walker Percy; scholars such as M.E. Bradford, Ward Allen, Russell Kirk, J.O. Tate, Grady McWhiney, Tom Landess, Mark Royden Winchell, and Donald Livingston; and politicians and commentators, including U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan, syndicated columnist William Murchison, and Chronicles editors Aaron D. Wolf, Clyde Wilson, and Thomas Fleming.

"Generally, the Southern writers allowed into 'mainstream' publications are either those who have made a career out of libeling the home folks or those too important to be ignored. Amazingly and refreshingly, Chronicles has not only treated Southern subjects abundantly and fairly but has welcomed many Southern writers who are not among the great but who have something to say and can say it well." So writes Clyde Wilson in his Introduction to Garden of the Beaux Arts, the first volume of Chronicles of the South, a collection of articles from Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Published in Rockford, Illinois, Chronicles has nevertheless been home to some of the best writing on the South over the last quarter of a century. Volume One features contributions by Southern novelists and poets, including Donald Davidson, Madison Smartt Bell, Fred Chappell, and Walker Percy; scholars such as M.E. Bradford, Ward Allen, Russell Kirk, J.O. Tate, Grady McWhiney, Tom Landess, Mark Royden Winchell, and Donald Livingston; and politicians and commentators, including U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan, syndicated columnist William Murchison, and Chronicles editors Aaron D. Wolf, Clyde Wilson, and Thomas Fleming.

The South won't go away. Not yet. For one reason, there are those of us who love her still. For another, those old Southern constitutionalists and Agrarian critics of 'progress' are for many people beyond Mason-Dixon's Line starting to look less like disagreeable relics and more like gifted prophets. Thus ends Clyde Wilson's Introduction to In Justice to so Fine a Country, the second volume of Chronicles of the South, a collection of articles from Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Published in Rockford, Illinois, Chronicles has nevertheless been home to some of the best writing on the South published over the last quarter of a century. Volume Two features contributions by scholars and politicians, men of letters and political analysts, not to mention the only real live sociologist in captivity who can write well and has a sense of humor. Some names are familiar-Patrick J. Buchanan, George Garrett, William Murchison, Thomas Fleming, Clyde Wilson, John Shelton Reed-and others less so, but all of the contributions in this remarkable volume are worth savoring.

"The South won't go away. Not yet. For one reason, there are those of us who love her still. For another, those old Southern constitutionalists and Agrarian critics of 'progress' are for many people beyond Mason-Dixon's Line starting to look less like disagreeable relics and more like gifted prophets." Thus ends Clyde Wilson's Introduction to In Justice to so Fine a Country, the second volume of Chronicles of the South, a collection of articles from Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Published in Rockford, Illinois, Chronicles has nevertheless been home to some of the best writing on the South published over the last quarter of a century. Volume Two features contributions by scholars and politicians, men of letters and political analysts, not to mention "the only real live sociologist in captivity who can write well and has a sense of humor." Some names are familiar-Patrick J. Buchanan, George Garrett, William Murchison, Thomas Fleming, Clyde Wilson, John Shelton Reed-and others less so, but all of the contributions in this remarkable volume are worth savoring.

Published in 1981, "Why the South Will Survive" is an intense self-examination of the South at a critical moment in its history. All of the contributors take pride in being southerners and regard their region as a national asset. While agreeing that the South has changed, they do not agree that it has become more like the rest of America or that it has lost its essential distinctiveness. Examining many aspects of the South--religion, manners, family life, localism, literature, politics, rural life, and urbanization--these essays acknowledge the power and relevance of the Agrarian tradition and argue that the South can still provide a model and touchstone for the nation.

Contributors: Don Anderson, M. E. Bradford, Cleanth Brooks, Thomas Fleming, Samuel T. Francis, George Garrett, William C. Havard, Hamilton C. Horton Jr., Thomas H. Landess, Andrew Lytle, Marion Montgomery, John Shelton Reed, George C. Rogers Jr., David B. Sentelle, Clyde N. Wilson.