Local history at its best usually includes more than the immediate vicinity. Lisa Pinley Covert's study of San Miguel de Allende is a prime example. The author integrates history in three dimensions—local, national, and international—to examine the evolution of this small city in the hills of Mexico, 200 miles north of Mexico City and about 550 miles from the border with the United States. San Miguel enjoyed prosperity in the late colonial period only to slip into decline in the nineteenth century. The Revolution of 1910 did not bring substantial change to San Miguel in the 1910s and 1920s, but thereafter an unusual combination of cultural and economic factors altered the historical trajectory of this community.

Popular writers of the 1930s from the United States such as Stuart Chase and John Steinbeck portrayed rural Mexico in terms of isolated communities removed from the mainstream of world events, but Covert's book reveals a different picture. Her history of San Miguel de Allende portrays a dynamic community that interacted with national and international trends. She covers nearly a century, beginning with the culminating years of the Mexican Revolution under leftist president Lázaro Cárdenas in the 1930s and concluding with the neoliberal policies of the early twenty-first century. San Miguel, in contrast to the image of somnolent rural communities, was drawn into interaction with outside influences. A major strength in the book is the author's ability to show how local personalities and institutions chose to interact with national and global trends. Covert's study is based on a variety of local sources and interviews and balanced by her understanding of the larger historical context.

The beginning point is José Mojica's purchase of a moribund estate in San Miguel in 1935. Mojica was a motion picture performer and opera singer whose success in Hollywood enabled him to buy and revive this property and turn it into a vibrant center for convivial parties and cultural activities. Prominent participants included movie stars such as Dolores del Río and Mario Moreno and intellectuals like Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral. This environment attracted Mexican art historian Manuel Toussaint, who saw potential in the town's colonial buildings, its blossoming cultural life, and the possibilities of tourism. Toussaint's insights and efforts attracted visitors not only from Mexico City, but also the United States. A crucial figure was Sterling Dickinson, a Chicago artist who first saw San Miguel as the guest of José Mojica. Dickinson appreciated this forgotten jewel in the Mexican hinterland and quickly initiated a press campaign in the Chicago area. There soon followed the establishment of an artist community that drew its members from Chicago and across the United States.

The timing was propitious. San Miguel benefited from the artistic bent of the Good Neighbor Policy in the 1930s and early 1940s and the expansion of tourism. There were problems, however, as was (and is) typical of surges of international mingling. After World War II, the presence of US veterans in San Miguel led to tensions and confrontations, as did the arrival of practitioners of the countercultural movement from north of the border in the late 1960s. The Mexican debt crisis and peso devaluations of the early 1980s were also sharp setbacks. Nevertheless, San Miguel persevered and achieved state, national, and global recognition for the preservation of its historical treasures and its involvements in tourism and artistic endeavors.

At this point, the reviewer is supposed to comment on ways in which the book under review can be improved. After much rumination, this reviewer can find no justification for suggestions along these lines. Covert's work is a model for the placement of local history within national and global contexts. It ranks with Rick López's Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State in its presentation of history in this multidimensional framework. It also serves as a timely reminder that the movement of people across political and cultural borders is a phenomenon that, in spite of moments of anxiety and frustration, is a part of human existence in the modern world.