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Writing a general textbook that covers any of the periods of Latin American history is an enormously daunting task, so anyone who ventures into the field deserves the gratitude of undergraduate teachers everywhere as well as their admiration. The writer must tread carefully, however, because this is a potential minefield with the enormous amount of material that has to be covered and the consequent inevitability of choosing a route that, despite every good intention, does not fit every teacher's exact requirements and leads almost assuredly to some sort of criticism. Teresa Meade, a specialist in Brazilian history and gender studies at Union College, New York, is the latest to try her hand, in this case examining Latin America's modern history from independence to the present day. The book has its good points, but the final package is not as successful as one might wish.
Like Lawrence Clayton and Michael Conniff in their similarly titled (though somewhat more detailed) textbook, Meade presents her history by focusing primarily on themes rather than geographical areas. In the process, she manages to touch on most areas and gives some idea of how they were affected by the overarching developments of the period. Her opening, background chapter is a rather extensive account of the colonial period, although she skips over the vital role that silver mining played in the Spanish American economy, concentrating instead on the emergence of the big estate, which is one of the subjects that she subsequently pursues. The independence period is situated in a chapter on slavery...