Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - South America

Latin America is developing rapidly. As the authors see the region, a small group of countries has found a fast-forward button. In these countries change is exciting, occurring at such a rapid pace that a major breakthrough hi economic growth appears within grasp. After an almost decade-long period of recession and stagnation, many Latin American economies now have elected governments. With a few exceptions, most have also improved their socioeconomic conditions beyond meeting basic human needs. Yet few North Americans or Europeans are aware of these advances. How does Latin America fit...

Beyond Bogota is framed around the eleven hours that Leech was held captive by the FARC, Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla group, in August 2006. Drawing on unprecedented access to soldiers, guerrillas,...

The Paraguayan revolt of 1721-1735 was the first of sev-eral events that presaged the Hispanic American Inde-pendence movements of the early nineteenth century. Exist-ing works on the revolt, though, are either too short, superficial, or inaccurate. The Colonial History of Paraguay is an original contribution to the scholarship on this crucial period in Paraguay's history. More than a detailed account of the revolt, the work provides an overview of Paraguay in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, combining politics, eco-nomics, and social analysis into an integrated whole. It...

In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called "The Lost City of Z." In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett's quest for "Z" and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he...

Insurgent citizenships have arisen in cities around the world. This book examines the insurgence of democratic citizenship in the urban peripheries of Sao Paulo, Brazil, its entanglement with entrenched systems of inequality, and its contradiction in violence.

James Holston argues that for two centuries Brazilians have practiced a type of citizenship all too common among nation-states--one that is universally inclusive in national membership and massively inegalitarian in distributing rights and in its legalization of social differences. But since the 1970s, he shows, residents of...

Surrounded by the peaks of the Andean cordillera, the deep blue waters of Lake Titicaca have long provided refreshment and nourishment to the people who live along its shores. From prehistoric times, the Andean peoples have held Titicaca to be a sacred place, the source from which all life originated and the site where the divine manifests its presence.

In this interdisciplinary study, Veronica Salles-Reese explores how Andean myths of cosmic and ethnic origins centered on Lake Titicaca evolved from pre-Inca times to the enthronement of the Virgin of Copacabana in 1583. She begins by...

They say those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it. Thus the importance of this book. The Agony of Argentine Capitalism: From Menem to the Kirchners is the capstone of a magisterial trilogy exploring the reasons for Argentina's shocking "reversal of development." In the early 20th century, Argentina was a rising star. It was one of the world's ten richest countries, on course to a place among the most advanced and prosperous liberal democracies in the world. Then, in 1929, Argentina fell into an economic coma from which no political or military shock treatment has...

They say those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it. Thus the importance of this book. The Agony of Argentine Capitalism: From Menem to the Kirchners is the capstone of a magisterial trilogy exploring the reasons for Argentina's shocking "reversal of development." In the early 20th century, Argentina was a rising star. It was one of the world's ten richest countries, on course to a place among the most advanced and prosperous liberal democracies in the world. Then, in 1929, Argentina fell into an economic coma from which no political or military shock treatment has...

Perhaps the most amazing thing of all about Garcilaso de la Vega's epic account of the De Soto expedition is the fact that, although it is easily the first great classic of American history, it had never before received a complete or otherwise adequate English translation in the 346 years which have elapsed since its publication in Spanish. Now the Inca's thrilling narrative comes into its own in the English speaking world.

Hernando de Soto's expedition for the conquest of North America was the most ambitious ever to brave the perils of the New World. Garcilaso tells in remarkably...

This is an important collection that brings together the work of...