Those who are interested in new data about the great Argentine educator and president, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, will find little in this book beyond a few notes on the relationship between his family and that of his cousin and namesake, Domingo Soriano Sarmiento and five letters to the young man. In these letters Sarmiento offers advice to his former pupil on the educational opportunities available in Chile, recounts some of his own experiences in that country, and suggests a program of activities worthy of the attention of the new San Juan Literary Society. He also gives a “sermon on conjugal duties,” which remains as tantalizingly incomplete as it was when published earlier in the review, Nosotros, considers the possibility of proper administration of justice in a provincial town, and hints of new political developments in which Urquiza is to be involved. The rest of this little volume is a brief biography of Don Domingo Soriano Sarmiento, whose activities were largely confined to his native province of San Juan and are accordingly of local rather than general interest.
Written by the director of the Archivo Histórico y Administrativo of San Juan, the volume is another of the many studies in which Argentina paid homage to Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in the 1961 sesquicentennial celebration of the anniversary of his birth.
