Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture.

• Author: Restrepo, Jose Luis

Reviewed by Jose Luis Restrepo

The growing interest of English-speaking readers in the role played by Latin America in hemispheric affairs justifies the prodigious effort entailed in producing an encyclopedia of the history and culture of Spanish-, French-, and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Americas. (The English-speaking Caribbean nations, with their own history and identity, are included in summary form.)

This admirable volume offers considerable insight and is highly successful in presenting a panoramic vision of regional history and cultural expressions. It will both educate Latin American scholars and meet the needs of professional researchers, teachers, and analysts of the area's politics and culture. The five volumes contain nearly 5,300 articles on various topics written by a large and distinguished group of experts.

Of special interest are the articles on each of the Latin American countries, with a basic summary of the broad outlines of national history, describing the major events analyzed within the context of each society's political evolution. This brief history, divided into major periods, is contributed to in may cases by more than one scholar. Although, as with any encyclopedia, quality is somewhat uneven, national history articles are fairly homogeneous and designed to offer neutral, objective perspectives.

The encyclopedia includes almost three thousand biographies of political and military leaders, writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and other distinguished figures in Latin American history whose names are indexed in Volume 5. There are also articles on geographic topics, historical and...