Book Reviews

A Review of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States As something of an old hand in the history of coffee enterprise, I don't very often discover a new work that so effectively answers questions I've had for decades. Michelle Craig McDonald...

A Review of Serial Mexico: Storytelling across Media, from Nationhood to Now When I was in undergrad at Emerson College, I met a student from Croatia who spoke to me in perfect Spanish. When I asked her how she was so fluent, she predictably told me she'd studied it...

A Review of The Years of Blood: Stories of a a Reporting Life in Latin America If you regularly read ReVista, you’ve probably read Alma Guillermoprieto.  Her new book, The Years of Blood, offers, as its subtitle suggests, “stories from a reporting life in Latin...

A Review of Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing After the Coup It was 1972, and three young men—one accompanied by his wife— arrived separately in Chile from different points in the U.S. Upper Midwest. None had ever been to the...

A Review of The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution Death does not always mean an end. In early 2013, Venezuela’s president, known as Comandante Hugo Chávez, died after struggling with cancer. Having won the 2012...

A Review of Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina In the early winter of 1990, one year into the presidency of Carlos Menem, the Buenos Aires police held a public auction of a small fleet of cars that had long been in their service....

A Review of The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras Christopher Loperena’s book, aptly titled the Ends of Paradise, brings forth sharp analysis of the threats to Garifuna life in Honduras through what he calls a "racialized...

A Review of Liberating Spiritualities: Reimagining Faith in the AméricasAs the director of a doctoral program in spirituality, colleagues and students often ask me if I have any recommendations for articles or books they should read. Because the field of spirituality...