Initialed notices were written by John V. Lombardi, David M. Pletcher, Eobert E. Quirk, Merle E. Simmons, and Otis P. Starkey, all of Indiana University.
In 1964 the Revue Historique published a remarkably perceptive and useful discussion of major trends in the historiography of Latin America during the years 1950-1962. That article is now published in Spanish in an attractive pamphlet which makes the text available to a far wider audience. Despite the passage of six years the essay retains its pertinence and perception.
Essentially it fulfills two functions not easily harmonized, but here handled with economy and skill. It is a brief review of the more important guides, periodicals, documentary series, critical editions of earlier writers, and categories of new monographic writing. As such it is most useful for students beginning reading in Latin American history. It is also a short but sharply analytical assessment of fashions in historical writing and of the extent to which research and speculation have used the possibilities inherent in the region and its materials.
With the additional perspective of six years, one may say that the overemphasis on intellectual history which Chaunu mentions may be yielding to the rising prestige of social and economic history. The Programa de Historia de América, so promising in 1962, has come to a halt at the point at which it might have given greatest yield. For the rest, the years since 1962 continue to show slow but steady increase in historical studies of Latin America, most notably those characterized by more careful and wider examination of sources, use of new techniques of analysis, and formulation of questions in objective rather than patriotic terms.
