Latin America: An Interpretive History

This book was required for my Latin American history course. I found it very interesting to read, but sometimes a little overwhelmed with all the information all bunched up, so when I was taking notes, it was like pages long since I had to write down where and when things were.

The late E. Bradford Burns was one of the most versatile historians of Latin America, and this book contains the fruits of his 30+ years of research and teaching. All textbook surveys require choices of content and emphasis, but here Burns's have resulted in a superior volume. His is an interpretive and thematic perspective, permitting an integrated approach to the entire continent. This works better than having discrete chapters on specific countries, which may or may not be the focus of a particular course or single reader. Burns stresses the importance of the region's institutions in shaping its history, and gives due attention to the 19th century, often a "forgotten century" compared with the 16th or 20th. A central organizing theme is the struggle between elites and folk communities, a continuous factor in the continent's history. As a Brazilianist, Burns gives better coverage of that major country than does any other text, without slighting Spanish America. The author's prose, while not exactly scintillating, is clear and readable, and his quietly humanistic values further heighten our interest. Drawbacks: reduced coverage of pre-19th century period; little citation of primary sources; and a perfunctory stab at incorporating work on women's history. Nevertheless, this is a superb text for any university course on Modern Latin America or Latin America Since Independence, and I found that it works very well in my own classes. Having canvassed all the major texts (which have many merits of their own), I recommend this as the finest within the inevitable limits of any one-volume work.

Used this book as textbook in advanced (IB) History of the Americas; very authoritative and complete, must say one of the clearest books I've seen on this subject; a definitive narrative of Latin American history.