Intervention!: The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917

This history of the United States's meddling in Mexican affairs features a cast of characters who don't make either side look very good. President Woodrow Wilson regularly misapprehends the situation to his south, prompting two violations of Mexican sovereignty: a naval occupation of Veracruz and an aggressive search by the American military for the bandit Pancho Villa, who raided a town in New Mexico. The Mexican politicians were hardly exemplars of democratic enlightenment, but the American response to their shenanigans sparked an enormous amount of national indignation in Mexico that still hasn't entirely vanished. Brigadier General John J. Pershing, the man charged with hunting down Villa, comes across as an upright soldier and one of the book's few noble figures; he's the central character in Eisenhower's most entertaining section.