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Argentina's Partisan Past: Nationalism and the Politics of History. By Michael Goebel. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011. Pp. xi, 284. Illustrations. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $95.00 cloth.
Michael Goebel's Argentina's Partisan Past is a real historian's book, a work that appeals to our scholarly impulses by tracing competing traditions of historical interpre- tation and modes of imagining the nation. This may sound like an effort to damn the book with praise, but Latin American specialists will appreciate the study's creativity, thoroughness, and scope. It offers a welcome guide through the twists and turns of twentieth-century Argentinean intellectual history by considering an impressive range of historical thinkers, institutions, and movements. At the same time, Goebel takes care to situate Argentinean examples within a theoretically informed discussion of national- ism as a global phenomenon. Non-specialists will be rewarded by the book's assessment of differing methodologies in the study of nationalism and its keen insights on the political uses of history.
The book examines the making of two broad "pantheons" of interpretation: the liberal school (also known as Mitrismo) and the...