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El Paso
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  • Published: 31 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9780593471869
  • Imprint: Dutton
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $65.00
Categories:

El Paso

Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory

Formats & editions
EBook
3 Mar 2026
Audiobook
3 Mar 2026
Hardback
31 Mar 2026
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From New York Times national politics reporter Jazmine Ulloa, a sweeping human history of El Paso, revealing violence, power, and privilege at play in America's most famous border town.

From New York Times reporter Jazmine Ulloa, a sweeping human history of El Paso, revealing violence, power, and privilege at play in America's most famous border town.

El Paso has been called the “Ellis Island” of America’s southern border, a mountain pass cum border town cum bifurcated metropolis where past meets future, and disadvantage meets opportunity, or so the promise goes.

El Paso is an extraordinary, can’t-look-away reported history; it uses deep research and dozens of new interviews to blow away the myth of this place, where Mexico’s Juarez and America’s El Paso intertwine. It charts the history of El Paso through five families. From the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican Repatriation, to the shifting immigration laws under Reagan and Trump and the violence and bloodshed brought on by the drug war, El Paso captures a place often misunderstood or forgotten by the rest of the country, and the world.

El Paso is a brave new work of narrative nonfiction that gives new voice and perspective to history that has long been checked at the border, or told through the lens of white men alone. Ulloa draws upon meticulous research and reporting and stunning historical detail to craft the intimate narratives of an unforgettable cast of characters.
  • Published: 31 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9780593471869
  • Imprint: Dutton
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $65.00
Categories:

About the author

Jazmine Ulloa

Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter for The New York Times. She previously reported for The Boston Globe, where she was part of a team that won the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, and the Los Angeles Times. A native of El Paso, she started out as a journalist in Texas, where she worked for newspapers in Brownsville, San Antonio, and Austin. She has made appearances on MSNBC, CNN, and CBS, as well as in Al Jazeera’s documentary television program Fault Lines.
portrait photo of Jazmine Ulloa

Praise for El Paso

Praise for El Paso:

"A compelling chronicle of the city... Ulloa is a terrific storyteller, and as she explores her hometown, she breathes life into dusty names from its past... The fine book she has written about her home is an important contribution to understanding a fascinating, complicated, vibrant, richly diverse city.”—New York Times Book Review

"The book is a powerful, sensitive, and timely dispatch.” —Boston Globe

"In her beautifully woven history of El Paso, Ulloa... A journalist with deep roots in El Paso... weaves together the history of the southwest U.S.-Mexican border with the stories of five families, including her own." —Foreign Affairs Magazine

"Ulloa...skillfully deploys a lyrical literary voice, portrays El Paso as an emblem of Texan and American imminence. This book—her first and, one trusts, not her last—can be read as a deeply moving record of our fitful attempts to become a state and a nation that welcome people from all over the world."—Texas Monthly

“In the ebbing and flowing narrative of immigration battles and families trying to find their place in the world, the author guides us, expertly, through history, politics, and personal stories, ending with her own family’s origin story. ... A passionate and urgent account that transforms the embers of a bypassed history into flames that consume the present.” —Kirkus (starred review)

Praise for El Paso:

"A compelling chronicle of the city... Ulloa is a terrific storyteller, and as she explores her hometown, she breathes life into dusty names from its past... The fine book she has written about her home is an important contribution to understanding a fascinating, complicated, vibrant, richly diverse city.”—New York Times Book Review

"The book is a powerful, sensitive, and timely dispatch.” —Boston Globe

"In her beautifully woven history of El Paso, Ulloa... A journalist with deep roots in El Paso... weaves together the history of the southwest U.S.-Mexican border with the stories of five families, including her own." —Foreign Affairs Magazine

"Ulloa...skillfully deploys a lyrical literary voice, portrays El Paso as an emblem of Texan and American imminence. This book—her first and, one trusts, not her last—can be read as a deeply moving record of our fitful attempts to become a state and a nation that welcome people from all over the world."—Texas Monthly

“In the ebbing and flowing narrative of immigration battles and families trying to find their place in the world, the author guides us, expertly, through history, politics, and personal stories, ending with her own family’s origin story. ... A passionate and urgent account that transforms the embers of a bypassed history into flames that consume the present.” —Kirkus (starred review)