In what may properly be described as a booklet—and a rather patchwork booklet at that—Víctor de Urquiza Anchorena takes issue with a contemporary of Juan Manuel de Rosas, Lucio V. Mansilla, and an Argentine historian of recent years, Diego Luis Molinari. The controversy essentially involves a proper definition of the role played by Justo José de Urquiza in the downfall of Rosas in 1852.

The real question at issue is one of semantics revolving around one’s definition of the words “traitor” and “treason.” The author of the present volume is quite obviously inclined to define them in the narrow Benedict Arnold sense, that is, the defection by a loyal officer at a critical stage in the actual campaign. Within this framework of definition it is argued with the requisite documentary support that Urquiza was not a traitor, for his opposition to Rosas had become manifest some years before 1851-1852. The culminating events of that period, therefore, should be defined as the unselfish acts of a dedicated patriot rather than the treacherous defection of a loyal subordinate.

This slim volume could well be of interest to the Urquiza-Rosas specialist, particularly in some of its documentary quotations, but the generalist might be better advised to make a bibliographic note of it and then pass on to broader and more informative treatments.

Salomón Wapnir is a man who very obviously loves his native land and manages quite effectively to share that effection with his reader, particularly his Argentine reader. One can readily imagine that as these pages were composed the author had a recording of Carlos Gardel singing “Mi Buenos Aires Querido” playing softly in the background, for the moods of both book and song are the same. In each case there is a sentimental evocation of the romantic essence of the city and the nation. Wapnir has apparently travelled into every nook and cranny of Argentina from Misiones to Tierra del Fuego and from Buenos Aires to Mendoza. He has then put into words the attempt of a native son to reach out and pluck the chords of the national memory and to touch the pulse of the vital present. Some measure of his success in this endeavor is evidenced in the fact that the chapters of the work first appeared serially in the literary supplement of La Prensa and were then gathered together in the present volume.

For the alien reader, however, who might like to open a closet door or two and see what is behind the Argentine façade this work will be of little help. The more attractive aspects of the land, its people, and its history are here, but they are so swathed in pink cotton candy that the sometimes harsher reality is too effectively obscured. Probably this picture of Argentina will disappoint the pragmatist while it will send the romanticist into raptures.