Cutting for Sign: One Man's Journey Along the U.S.-Mexican Border

The border between the United States and Mexico extends 1,951 miles. Among the people who live along it are a migrant laborer huddled in a makeshift camp, a Chicano cowpuncher, a Pima Indian who makes his living tracking drug smugglers across the desert, and the millions crowded along the border in Mexicali.

In this beautifully written, unerringly insightful book, William Langewiesche allows us to see this boundary in all its political, moral, and emotional complexity. Whether he is patrol...