fantastico! a brief overview, but plenty of detail

fantastico! a brief overview, but plenty of detail
I appreciated the way the author kept neutural while still contextualizing the recent events

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Great overview of the last few hundred years

I read it while on my trip throughout Peru and really enjoyed connecting the places I was seeing to their past.

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4 people found this helpful

good but stopped early

Would you try another book from George Pendle and/or Fred Williams?

great history on the continent. It is a lot to cover, but it covers it well. I was a little upset that it didn't go past the 1970s. I would like some contemporary history. It was good though.

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boring

struggled to finish and it was boring, maybe because its old but it was boring

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BIASED AND OUTDATED, YET...

What did you like best about A History of Latin America? What did you like least?

Mr Pendle's approach to Latin American history is thoroughly Anglo. By this I mean that, in his view, Great Britain played an overwhelming role in the wars and independence of the Spanish colonies and in their further development throughout the XIX and XX centuries. (?) Moreover, and possibly owing to the fact that this seems to be a 1963 edition, the language used to describe specific human groups such as the Spaniards, the "Criollos" and the Natives is very frequently plagued by politically incorrect monickers such as "ignorant", "slow", "lazy" "slothful" and even "stupid"!! (One point for British arrogance; zero points for British intellectual sensitivity).

In spite of the aforesaid, one must recognize there is a genuine desire to be comprehensive and incorporate as much as possible of Latin American history in the space available.

If you’ve listened to books by George Pendle before, how does this one compare?

N/A

How could the performance have been better?

Mr Williams rendering of the book is outrageously tedious, in spite of the fact that the man possesses a very fine and silky voice. His inclination to a monotone and lethargic reading makes it quite difficult to follow him without falling asleep. I honestly must say that I am a regular listener of audiobooks and therefore pretty well trained in listening skills, but Mr Williams nevertheless is a very trying experience,

Was A History of Latin America worth the listening time?

See my previous comments.

Any additional comments?

Time for a newer version of Latin American history in your Audible options.

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11 people found this helpful

Out of date, in many respects

Note, above all, that the release date on the Audible recording is misleading - this book was published in 1963. It’s also important to note that the author was a British professor, and although he was clearly knowledgeable, his text suffers from many of the flaws of the English (and US) scholarship of that time about non-European history and cultures. His sources are primarily English-language, which is baffling given the vast scholarship over hundreds of years available in Spanish and Portuguese. He gives a surprising amount of space to the influence of the UK on Latin American history, given that she was at best a bit player on the scene for the most part. He indulges in sweeping generalizations about the characteristics (as he sees them) of whole peoples, although to his credit he does so with clear attempts compassion and appreciation - the condescension is apparent, but it’s not as blatant as some. But the biggest flaws in the work are inherent in the approach - trying to summarize, in one volume, the diverse histories of two continents in a single, not-very-large volume, including a gloss of the pre-European history of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas. Pendle did an admirable job at this task, all things considered, but the flaws in the project itself are hard to ignore.

The recording is well done and the narrator is solid, although it is sometimes obvious that he is not fluent in either Spanish or Portuguese. Certain words, names, terms, and places are mispronounced. (E.g., each time he mentioned Oaxaca, he pronounced it differently.) Ideally, it would be wonderful if a work on Latin America would include the actual sounds and words of that diverse land.

Overall, I found this somewhat useful as a starting point for further research and reading, especially given that there are relatively few audiobook alternatives available in English, either as original works or in translation. But I wish that gap would be addressed.

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1 person found this helpful

Very 70s perspective on history

This book has lots of hot takes on the 'character" of Latin American people. If that sounds too broad and makes you wince then you won't like this book much. It's redeeming aspect is that will familiarize you with the outline of history. Maybe one more redeeming aspect is that it'll give you a background on factors that 40 years ago were regarded as forces of history. I'm sure the next book I read on this subject will argue against the ideas of this book.

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