as our new release of the week: Hard Line: Life and Death on the U.S.-Mexico Border. By Ken Ellingwood (Pantheon) Drawing upon his experience covering the border for the Los Angeles Times, Ellingwood looks at the effects of Operation Gatekeeper, the 1994 U.S. plan to seal off sections of the border. “In the 10 years since Clinton’s border crackdown, fences have been erected, new agents have been stationed, the number of illegal border crossers has decreased in urban areas but increased in rural areas, and with each passing year, the death toll along the border has risen,” writes Kathryn Lewis in L.A. Weekly. “Ellingwood skillfully charts the devastating effects of the crackdown on migrants and on the communities receiving them. Ellingwood seamlessly moves between a cogent policy analysis, an overview of the border’s early history, and stories of migrants, ranchers, border patrol agents, human-rights and church activists, and members of a Native American tribe divided by the border.”

Says Publisher’s Weekly, “What makes Ellingwood’s portrayal so remarkable is his ability to examine the border from nearly every conceivable angle. ” Read an excerpt.