Customer Reviews

A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century

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This interesting book is a translation of "Breve Historia Contemporanea de Argentina", and it is a good way to start studying Argentina's history if you don't speak spanish.

However, if you can speak that language, I strongly recommend you to buy the original version in spanish. The reason for that is, in my opinion, that it is always better to read a book in the language it was written, so as not to miss any nuances in meaning, and in order to appreciate better the style of the author. Disregarding how good a translator is, he is bound to make at least some mistakes, sometimes ignoring slight degrees of difference that convey not only meaning, but also feeling.

In this version there are parts where it isn't easy to follow the author's ideas, but from my point of view that is due to two things. To start with, it isn't easy to explain Argentina's history, because it is quite complex. As a result, explanations regarding that theme are frequently complicated, even in the original version of this book in spanish. Secondly, translating a book to another language is never easy, and I think that the interpreter (James Brennan) did his job incredibly well.

The structure of "A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century" is quite simple, but really useful and eminently practical. After a short introduction, the author starts this book with Yrigoyen's first presidential term, continues with Alvear's presidency and then carries on with Yrigoyen's unfinished second term. He delves deeply into the conservative restoration, and then tries to explain what Perón meant to Argentina, and the polarization of society that his presidency produced. From then on, democratic governments would be constantly interrupted by revolts, and the military would have the final word regarding all matters of importance in Argentina. That, until the Malvina's defeat, which ended up in the collapse of the military regime, and the beginning of a fledging democracy... This, the first edition in english of "Breve Historia Contemporanea de Argentina", has also new chapter that delves into the decade of the 1990s, and that wasn't included in the 1994 spanish edition.

Luis Alberto Romero is a very well known argentinian historian, author of other good books. Despite that, this is the one I prefer, at least so far. Notwithstanding the fact that it deals mainly with historical facts, it also includes his interpretation regarding what happened.

Some people criticize the author because he ask them to "accept his interpretation of History". I don't think that is the case. The aim of the author was to write an useful and short book for his students and the average reader interested in History, and in order to do so he sometimes had to write directly what he thought about a period, instead of saying what many authors thought about the same period. On the other hand, he does that as little as possible and only in order to keep the number of pages in his book from growing too much, and he never forgets to include in the bibliography reading material from authors that think differently.

On the whole, I think this is an outstanding book. It gives a very good introduction to Argentina's Contemporary History, and even though it isn't overly long, it is remarkably thorough and well documented. I prefer the spanish version, but I think that this version is also very good, and I must recognize that it has a merit that the other didn't: it allows those who don't speak spanish to read it.

Belen Alcat

This book provides an overview of Argentine history in the 20th century with a post-script from just last year. This book is combined narrative with a good deal of broad analysis looking at major factors governing the history of Argentina. In the Introduction, the author states that he is aiming to avoid a schematic view but wants to provide a large scale narrative. Despite this statement, this book tends towards structural analysis and a major theme, the difficulty of establishing democratic institutions, emerges from the narrative. Major structural factors that drive Argentine history are identified as Argentina's strong and often stormy coupling to international markets, the emergence of a strong and at times paternalistic state that tended to overpower other civic institutions, the development of distinct sectors of society lacking a common political culture, and the Argentine preference for charismatic leaders who appear to be all things to all people. In general, this is an informative and intelligent book. A defect of the book is that there is not sufficient narrative for a non-Argentine audience. This book was apparently written originally for the broad Argentine public and despite the author's best efforts at including significant narrative, it seems to presuppose a high school level knowledge of Argentine history. Another drawback is the writing style. As shown in several chapters, the author can write quite clearly and sometimes powerfully, but there are many passages written in academic jargon. The word discourse, for example, appears frequently and is used inconsistently as a semi-techical term to describe ideology and a variety of related phenomena. Whether this is the fault of the author or his translator cannot be known without reading the original spanish version.

I am very interested in Argentinean history, but this book was very disappointing because it presents Argentina's history as a bland series of events from an extremely objective point of view. There are no opinions, no emotions, and no personal stories whatsoever. It's purely a documentation of facts and events. Personally, that's not something I look for when researching a country's history.

While respecting the other reviews here of this book, I think it is simply indispensible to any serious underdstanding of Argentina's past and present condition.

For me, the twin bases of Argentine history are 1) The long, confusing, tormented and incomplete time between 16th century colonization and the emergence of an oligarchic semi-modern state in the early years of the 20th century, and 2) The long and often massive influx since the mid-1800s of Western Europeans who were certainly running from various kinds of chaos in their homelands but not running to embrace Argentina; many, indeed came only because they could not go to the US. Indeed, many immigrants had no interest in becoming citizens, nor in voting, and some returned after crises in their home countries eased.

The vastly imperfect form of representative democracy that emerged in early Argentine history was in fact just a continuation of the rule of powerful and conflicted oligarchs, and the issues of centralized vs. decentralized government is still a part of the political culture. The outsized dominance in size, money, people and sheer power of the Buenos Aires Province is still the dominant reality of the nation. The capital, with only three million people, is far less influential than might be imagined, and its voters elect candidates so vastly different from those in the rest of Argentina that they might as well be from a different planet.

From my reading of Romero, I am put in mind of that rather Zen-like phrase, "a clear picture of a fuzzy thing is still fuzzy." This, to me, is the best picture one can hope to have of this remarkable country at this point in time -- early in the 21st century. There remain so many fundamentally unresolved issues that the country, indeed, may never emerge as a mature democratic nation. The lack of the rule of law; the continuing and unapologetic use of bribes, terror, and manipulation; the rapidity and frequency with which the rich send their money offshore, guaranteeing no continuity in even basic commercial banking loan reserves; and the near-paralytic inability of the average Argentine to mobilize him- or herself towards any selfless behavior that might right the balance -- all these things and more contribute to a fragility that prohibits Argentina from adopting the basic legal, economic, and political frameworks that are needed for it to reach maturity as a nation state.

This is a severe commentary, but one I feel is clearly borne out by this book. I encourage you, if you're interested in learning how a nation achieves the status of permanent instability, to read it.

Peter Winterble
Buenos Aires

The form of history writing and the use of language (perhaps the fault of the translator) make this a very difficult read, perhaps not worth the effort. The author's approach to written history is to make generalizations and conclusory statements while rarely giving evidence to support them. The book tells us that the aristocracy tended to think this and the unions' goals were that. It does not, for the most part, tell the reader who wrote what, who said what to whom or who were the leaders performing what actions. It fails to connect the links between occurances over time that mark the turbulent development of the country. The author asks the reader to simply accept his point of view, his own interpretations, as if they were simply the truth. This reader is not willing to do so. I want to see the evidence, and the author seems reluctant to show it.

The language of the English translation is the other big problem. It is hobbled, academic and awkward. The prose of the translation is so stilted that it makes me want to put the book away. A sharp comparison that comes quickly to mind is the work of Simon Schama or Jaques Barzun, whose engaging and persuasive books hold the reader like a good novel (while making a very persuasive case, not asking the reader to accept their interpretations on faith).

I bought this book because I am planning my first visit to Argentina. It gave me some sense of the country's complex, troubled roots, at least as Mr. Romero sees it. Sadly, I do not know whether I should believe him, and he or his translator make reading this book too hard for the small payoff.

At first I got the wrong book sent to me. I then had to ship the book back and wait more time to receive the book I actually ordered. My book was in excellent condition. I am happy with how the seller handled the situation, but unhappy for the set back.