Our Take

Soldiers and Kings is a landmark work of investigative anthropology that fundamentally challenges how we understand migration and the people who facilitate it. Jason De León's seven years of embedded research represents the kind of access journalists and academics rarely achieve, and he uses it to humanize people typically demonized or simplified in political discourse. What makes this book extraordinary is De León's refusal to romanticize or condemn his subjects. The smugglers he follows are neither heroes nor villains but complex human beings operating within a system that creates impossible choices. The central love story adds emotional depth without sentimentalizing, showing how even in the shadow economy of human smuggling, people fall in love, make plans, and dream of different futures. De León's prose is vivid and immediate, reading like a thriller while maintaining anthropological rigor. He captures the terror of the journey, the desperation of migrants, and the moral ambiguity of those who profit from that desperation while also providing essential services. The book illuminates how border enforcement policies create the conditions for smuggling to thrive, making it a lucrative industry precisely because legal migration is nearly impossible. Readers who appreciated The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea or Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario will find similar compassion and investigative depth here. Soldiers and Kings is essential reading for understanding migration—not as an abstract policy issue but as lived human experience.