How do we explain Latin American history? Which scholarly, national, and analytical perspectives matter? Who is our audience? Sociologist Magda von der Heydt-Coca provides one answer in Latin American Development from Populism to Neopopulism. The monograph, she writes, is “the result of forty-three years of teaching and interacting with students of the First World,” in Switzerland and the United States (p. vii). It incorporates the author's personal experiences growing up in Bolivia and attending school in Argentina and Germany, and it discusses an array of countries in detail, from Mexico to Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela (the “patterns of development in question,” the author notes on page x, “are more evident in South America and Mexico,” while in Central America, US influence affected historical events differently). Rather than utilizing primary sources, the text brings in scholarly insights and methodologies from the fields of economics and social anthropology to offer “an...

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