Book Reviews

A Review of Megaprojects in Central America: Local Narratives About Development and the Good Life  What does “development” really mean when the promise of progress comes with displacement, conflict and loss of control over one's own territory? Who defines what a...

A Review of Authoritarian Consolidation in Times of Crisis: Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro What happened to the exemplary democracy that characterized Venezuelan democracy from the late 1950s until the turn of the century?  Once, Venezuela stood as a model of...

A Review of Las Luchas por la Memoria: Contra las Violencias en México Over the past two decades, human rights activists have created multiple sites to mark the death and disappearance of thousands in Mexico’s ongoing “war on drugs.” On January 11, 2014, I observed...

A Review of A Promising Past: Remodeling Fictions in Parque Central, Caracas A beacon of modern urban transformation and a laboratory of social reproduction, Parque Central in Caracas is a monumental enclave of 20th-century Venezuelan oil-fueled progress. The...

A Review of Bodies Found in Various PlacesThis bilingual anthology of Elvira Hernández, translated by Daniel Borzutzky and Alec Schumacher and published by Cardboard House Press, offers a comprehensive entry point into the work of the Chilean poet. The translators’...

A Review of An Ordinary Landscape of Violence: Women Loving Women in Guyana When first reading the title, An Ordinary Landscape of Violence, I asked myself if there is really anything “ordinary” about a landscape of violence? Preity R. Kumar argues that violence is...

A Review of Lula: A People’s President and the Fight for Brazil’s Future André Pagliarini’s new book arrives at a timely moment. During the summer of 2025, when the book was released, the United States began engaging in deeper debates about Brazil’s political...

A Review of The Archive and the Aural City: Sound, Knowledge, and the Politics of Listening Alejandro L. Madrid's new book challenged me, the former organizer of a musical festival in Mexico, to open my mind and entertain new ways to perceive a world where I once...