This University of Texas Press book is a translated collection of revisited pieces previously published in Spanish in various places. This collection includes ten chapters, seven “on history” and three “on language.” In the author's words, these chapters, or rather essays, constitute “a veritable mess” of weighty “divertimentos” on the “serious matter” of History that seek to incite “annoyance, indifference, doubts, and laughter” in the reader (pp. vii–viii). As such, readers will find that this book is of a kind with the author's recent rambles on “Latin Americanism” (Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea [2017]), insomuch as it is an eccentric assortment of writings that play, mostly in an ironic and irreverent mode, with the transnational topoi of Latin Americanist historiography as the author has lived and performed them over his notable career trajectory from Mexico to Barcelona and Chicago.
Those sufficiently annoyed or patient enough...
