Marak (history and political science, California U. of Pennsylvania) examines the national education policies of Plutarco Elías Calles during his tenure as president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928 and during his wielding of de-facto rule for the subsequent seven-year period known as the Maximato. He analyzes the national education policies as part of a nation-building project intended to construct an economically prosperous and culturally unified Mexico through centralization and assimilation. He also explores the reactions of a broad array of other actors--including teachers, educational inspectors, local government officials, priests and church members, indigenous peoples, and everyday Mexican citizens--to those policies while focusing on three major areas of contention: the battle over the federal government's political centralization program of taking over the state primary schools by federal inspectors in Chihuahua in 1933, the federal government's attempts to promote nationalism through special frontier schools along the US-Mexican border as a counter to US cultural and economic imperialism, and the federal government's indigenous assimilation program and the responses of the Tarahumara, Seri, and Tohono O'odham indigenous groups of northern Mexico. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)