John Ross (Photo by Marcia Perskie, courtesy of Nation Books)

March 4th, El Monstruo is coming. El monstruo, the monstrosity, is Mexico City. Expat poet and journalist, John Ross, an Upton Sinclair and American Book Award winner, presents the mother of all metropoli in his new history of the Mexico City: El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City (Nation Books, 2009).

In El Monstruo, Mexico’s hundred-year cycles of upheavals are graphically explained as Ross time-travels through layers of Mexico City history, and the floors of the Hotel Isabel, his residence for 25 years, where room 102 was a steady base of operations for his reporting.

Ross is forecasting bombs and riots in El Monstruo, D.F., in 2010, as in 1910, 1810, 1513, and that Mexico’s hundred-year bloodletting may have started earlier than usual this century.

As if in an effort to preempt unnecessary suffering, The Wall Street Journal suggests “A Revolutionary Idea in Mexico: Don’t Have One This Century.” This January 15, 2010, headline accompanied a story from their Mexico City correspondent, Nicholas Casey. with a counter view of sorts: “With Precedent of Revolts in 1810 and 1910, Nation Girds for 2010; ‘It’s Like a Tradition’.

But first come see John Ross relate all this and more at Left Hand Books, Thursday, March 4 at 7 pm. 1200 Pearl Street Boulder. Otherwise, visit Nation Books.

Or hear John Ross on KGNU (88.5 FM Boulder, 1390 AM Denver) on the Thursday Morning Magazine.