Brickmaking was one of the pioneering non-agricultural manufacturing industries in the lower Rio Grande/Rio Bravo corridor, and a precursor of the binational, cross-border maquiladora industry that came to identify the U.S.-Mexico border economy in the aftermath of the Border Industrialization Program [BIP] launched in 1965. Through research beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present, Scott Cook has sought to fill in these blank pages on the binational handmade brick industry and its competitive situation in the Texas market.

"Altogether, Cook offers a fine book. Readers wishing to learn the details of making and selling Mexican handmade brick will happily revel in Cook's descriptions, while readers interested in the labor and social history of the border will benefit from the wealth of information Cook presents." - Southwestern Historical Quarterly