The Hard Country: Fue el Estado.

Announcing my new book on the Mexican crisis and America's answers.

For those of you who came to Armas through my essays on Britain, America, and national identity, it may be worth clarifying that my major efforts these days involve grappling with the challenge of Mexican-state breakdown — and what Texas and the United States can do about it. We’ve been doing a podcast called The Hard Country on the topic for well over a year now, and now I am pleased to announce that there is a The Hard Country book en route as well.

The Hard Country will be serialized, with one chapter plus an associated podcast released each week. The first chapter is available to read now, and you can watch the podcast here:

A note on the book-cover design: that’s a photograph of my great-great uncle, Roy Sumpter of Chatham, Illinois, with his artillery battery of the First Illinois Cavalry at the Texas-Mexico border in late 1916. Corporal Sumpter ended up in the next two years a soldier of the American Expeditionary Force in France, and was killed on November 6th, 1918, in the Meuse-Argonne — where he rests today. He fell in Europe but he entered service to defend from violence in Mexico: history is a repetition, and we should remember.

The Hard Country can be found on YouTube, quite obviously, and also at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, and no doubt elsewhere.