Reviews for The United States and Latin America

The average rating for The United States and Latin America based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-09-17 00:00:00 Jason Laflin Published by the Texas University Press and clearly intended for academic studies, this may not exactly be riveting reading for everyone but I don't think it is too inaccessible for most readers. Depending on the subject, I tend to like rather dry and scholarly reads but not always. This was none of these things and I actually found myself fully engrossed with this book. I also actually found this to be an extremely impressive piece of work. If not just for the attempt at explaining and understanding such a volatile subject as racism, then easily for the amount of effort and research put into it. The author, Fredrick B. Pike, uses all available media ranging from books, newspapers, music to film to reconstruct the attitudes and opinions held by White Europeans and Latin Americans towards one another over the centuries. Unfortunately, most of these opinions found here in this book are largely from the European point of view but it does not fail to offer some of those from the Latin perspective as well. My only wish for this book is that it were somehow more balanced in this and offered more from the latter but possibly these are harder to come by when it comes to sources? Nevertheless, I still found a great many revelations in his exploration of this subject regardless. The main point that the book strives to make is that the contentious division between these two cultures essentially stemmed from a philosophical viewpoint. Fundamentally, European society and all of their various settlers to North America largely viewed nature as something to be tamed and dominated. To their perception, those of Latin cultures, American Indians, African slaves, as well as all women and children, including their own, were basically all helpless victims of nature's whims. This belief was based largely upon the apparent inability of these others to overcome their surroundings like they themselves purportedly did. Of course, any lay student of American history has at least peripherally heard this line of reasoning before, from the very first stories of the early European settlers of North American who perceived the vast Indian lands that lay before them as being entirely unused because of its lack of apparent development to their minds, to thebelief in American exceptionalism readily found in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. However, for me, the extent by which the genealogy of this system of belief is traced and outlined has not been as thoroughly explored as it is found here. Its steady progression and shifts, as well as some occasional reversals, over the years are exhaustively pursued within these pages. Only, make no mistake, this is not an apologist attempt at absolving the behavior by neither justifying nor excusing the actions caused by this worldview in any way but rather is trying to understand and rationalize this viewpoint. In the end, all of the barbarity and viciousness of this "philosophical" stance is laid bare for what it is, racism. He literally excoriates all of these attitudes and the damage they've done and continue to do in the final chapters. Clearly, this book is not for everyone as it is on the whole a rather uncomfortable read on many levels, to say the least. Only, no amount of squeamishness of this subject is an adequate excuse to avoid the subject entirely. Pike fiercely does so himself and rather authoritatively at that. Personally, based on just this one book I would not hesitate in the slightest to pick up another of his titles.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-10 00:00:00 Peter Delohery I enjoy learning about presidential history, and was extremely intrigued to learn more about President Harding. However, this book is very poorly written. It jumps around too often and is missing a lot of explanation leading into topics. Moreover, there are far too many people mentioned throughout with similarly no explanation of how they fit into the story. The author continually attacks other authors for failure to eliminate bias from their account of Harding's life and controversy, but this author hypocritically does little to eliminate his own opinions and bias from his writing. Not worth your time to read - there has to be something better out there.