"[Apostle of Progress] joins our growing corpus of biographical works on the Mexican Revolution, and its focus on an overlooked but important civil engineer adds a new dimension to our knowledge of the process of reconstruction."—Jürgen Buchenau, Hispanic American Historical Review
"Through the exploration of the life and work of the ambitious middle-class Mexican engineer Modesto Rolland, Castro (Arkansas State Univ.) explores the new liberal ideas that developed in the period leading up to and following the Mexican Revolution. . . . Thoroughly researched and written in engaging prose, this work promises to be a wonderful addition to Mexican history courses at any level."—M. C. Galván, Choice
"Castro's book represents a fine contribution to a recent body of scholarly work that seeks to reassess the roles that engineers, experts, and technocrats played in the development of modern Mexico."—Germán Vergara, Technology and Culture
"In this exceptionally well-researched and well-written biography, Castro tells the fascinating life story of this Mexican engineer to shed new light on U.S-Mexican relations, Mexico's place in global Progressivism, and the influence of technocratic ideas in post-revolutionary reconstruction—a period also accompanied by bottom-up mobilization and top-down clientelist political formations."—Matthew Vitz, Journal of Social History
“Castro’s Apostle of Progress is a significant achievement. In this compelling biography of the influential engineer Modesto C. Rolland, the author sheds new light on the critical yet poorly understood role of technological experts in the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath.”—J. Brian Freeman, coeditor of Technology and Culture in Twentieth-Century Mexico
“Justin Castro has produced an extraordinary examination of Mexican revolutionary and post-revolutionary politics through an intriguing, elucidating life-and-times biography of Modesto Rolland, multifaceted engineer, inventor, builder, and media entrepreneur. . . . This biography will intrigue any student of twentieth-century Mexican history, mirroring numerous qualities found in John W. F. Dulles’s classic Yesterday in Mexico.”—Roderic Ai Camp, author of Intellectuals and the State in Twentieth-Century Mexico
