Myrna I. Santiago is Associate Professor of History at St. Mary's College of California. Before earning her Ph.D. in History from the University of California at Berkeley, she travelled to Mexico on a Fullbright Fellowship and later worked in Nicaragua as a Human Rights investigator. Her work has appeared in Environmental History.

"The research contained in this book is quite good, [...] [Santiago's] contributions to the budding scholarship on environmental change in Mexico deserve notice. [...]There is much of great value in Santiago's book." -Emilio Kouri, University of Chicago, American Historical Review

• List of illustrations, figures, and appendices; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. The Huasteca Before Oil: 1. 'Paradise' and 'progress': the Huasteca in the 19th century; Part II. The Ecology of Oil: 2. Controlling the tropical forest: the shift in land tenure systems; 3. The anatomy of progress: changing land use patterns; 4. 'Masters of men, masters of nature': social change in the Huasteca; Part III. Challenging the Ecology of Oil: 5. 'Rude in manner': the Mexican oil workers, 1905–1921; 6. Revolutionaries, conservation, and wasteland; 7. The revolution from below: the oil unions, 1924–1938; Conclusion; Epilogue; Appendices; A note on the sources; Archives consulted; Selected bibliography; Index.