Initialed notices were written by Frank T. Bachmura, Richard Kagan, David M. Pletcher, Robert E. Quirk, and Michael Webster, all of Indiana University.
The burgeoning student population puts an intolerable load on almost any institution’s short supply of library books. For this reason, publishing books of readings for college and university history classes has become a large and lucrative business. It is easier to persuade affluent students to purchase paperbacks than to get financially strapped librarians to add multiple copies of the required readings. The Latin American history field has also been affected by the publication explosion, and a number of readings and problem books have already hit the market. Some are better than others, and the publishers’ commendable custom of sending examination copies broadcast throughout the country permits each Latin American historian to make up his own mind.
For what it is worth, my own opinion is that this book of “select problems” is better than most. Fredrick Pike has managed to assemble an admirable stable of associates. Sections are edited by such outstanding historians as Charles Gibson, J. H. Parry, John L. Phelan, Thomas E. Skidmore, and John Womack. Each contributor provides an introductory essay to the documents, as well as a conclusion and a bibliographic essay. The collaboration has produced a very good book.
Still, I cannot help but wonder how this (or any other readings book) is to be used in Latin American history classes. Such books have proved most successful in the U. S. history and in Western Civilization fields, whose large lecture classes are broken up into smaller discussion groups usually led by graduate assistants. The “problems” approach lends itself admirably to discussion and argumentation. Are any Latin American history classes so divided into smaller sections? If not, can a satisfactory discussion take place in a class with 30, 50, or 100 students? And if you do not discuss the documents, why not ask the students to read complete books, such as Lewis Hanke’s Spanish Struggle for Justice, which are available in relatively inexpensive paperback editions. This view represents only one historian’s idiosyncracies, however, and has nothing to do with the quality of this book which is uniformly high.
