In , the historian Timothy J. Henderson provides a comprehensive, dynamic, and insightful account of the era, and in the process deftly shows why the revolution failed to bring about meaningful and sorely needed reform. Tracing the conflict from its ambitious beginning in 1810 to the country's independence in 1821, makes sense of the complex and ambiguous conflict and its legacy, and, in so doing, forces a reconsideration of what "independence" meant and means for Mexico today.