At the beginning of Mexico Michener offers a chronology of events in the novel that extends from the year A.D. 500 until 1961. The chronology is divided into three columns in order to call attention to three major influences on Mexican history: the Indian civilizations, Spain, and the United States. The narrator Norman Clay is the descendant of people from both Mexico and the United States, and Michener wants him to personify the way in which the histories and fates of the two countries are inextricably linked.

Norman Clay is a journalist who has been sent by a New York magazine to cover the annual bullfight fiesta in Toledo, Mexico. In other words, he must do exactly what Michener is attempting to do in Mexico, which is to explain one country's history in such a way that it is relevant to readers in another country. In writing his account...