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Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States. Edited by Francis Fukuyama. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. ix and 312 pp., maps, diagrs., photos, notes, appendices, andindex. $21 .95 paper (ISBN: 9780199754199).
Tocqueville said that nations, like people, always bear the marks of their origins. It's hard to pin the origins of a nation to a particular time or place, and the character of a nation, as it were, is much more complex than that of a person. A nation lasts longer, too, and has more opportunities to change. Yet TocqueviUe makes a good point a nation can't escape its past. In fact, a nation is its past - everything it has done, made, and been. And its future depends on it.
Francis Fukuyama's edited book Falling Behind is an attempt to explain die historical fact diat, since at least the early 1 800s, and probably weU before, Latin America has been behind the United States - behind in creating wealth and sharing it fairly evenly, and behind in creating trust in poUtics, faith in the law, and beUef in the pursuit of knowledge through education. And it's unlikely that any country in Latin America wül catch the United States any time soon - or ever.
It's hard...