Focusing on the career of Enrique Gorostieta Velarde, the "atheist" mercenary hired to lead the insurgent army, Gorostieta and the Cristiada: Mexico's Catholic Insurgency of 1926-1929 by Richard Grabman, is an extended look at the how a search for cheap oil, attempts to reign in corporate power and a struggle for a workable economic and political system clashed with religious and cultural traditions, leading to a violent upheaval which has echoes that last to this day.  Relying on Mexican and foreign sources, the book sees the "Cristiada" less as a "Catholic" insurgency than as a response to cultural change with lessons that could apply to today’s circumstances.

"Gorostieta and the Cristiada is not a story of heroes and villains, only of flawed human beings in a changing world and of our all-too-human inability to react to social change without resorting to violence," Grabman said in a recent interview.