Benjamin T. Smith is a reader in Latin American history at the University of Warwick. He is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth-century Mexican grassroots politics and has done most of his research in the archives, villages, churches, and markets of the predominantly indigenous state of Oaxaca. He has published two monographs on the subject (Pistoleros and Popular Movements and The Roots of Conservatism in Mexico) and co-edited a volume on post-revolutionary state formation with Paul Gillingham (Dictablanda: Politics, Work and Culture in Mexico, 1938-1968). He has recently made the reluctant and potentially rash decision to move beyond his patria chica. And following his previous rather scattergun approach, he is working on a history of the post-revolutionary press (UNC Press will be publishing Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street next year) and a history of the Mexican drug trade.