Brazil and Argentina offer ideal histories for comparison. Born out of a similar Ibe-rian conquest culture, they have maintained, to a remarkable extent, their parallel heritage. Their evolution was dictated by agricultural exports to the northern hemisphere, and both have sought South American primacy and even primacy in Latin America. In the twentieth century, both have experienced agonizing interludes of democracy and authoritarianism, including bouts of strongman rule emerging out of the Great Depression. Both have recently tried developmentalism, only to land in neoliberalism. Neither has realized the nineteenth-century dream of continuous prosperity that European and North American visitors so freely predicted. Both have been left behind by the rapid growth of the “East Asian Tigers.” Distinguished historians Fausto and De Voto take advantage of these parallels to give us an outstanding comparative analysis of the two countries.
The authors begin with an excellent overview of the histories of their...
