“Showcasing the work of a remarkable group of scholars, this collection provides a sweeping reinterpretation of Latin America’s twentieth century and a thought-provoking intervention into our understanding of the history and meaning of political violence.”—Laurent Dubois, author of Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution “The abstract rejection of violence is one of the pillars of ... Read moretoday’s hegemonic liberal ideology, and is paradoxically used to legitimize the most brutal forms of actual violence. This is why this outstanding book not only offers an excellent study of the Latin American revolutionary process, but has universal relevance. Its precise analysis of the necessary role of emancipatory violence against the violence of the system itself brings a breath of fresh air into the stale moralism of the liberal Left. A much-needed awakening from our humanitarian dogmatic dream!”—Slavoj Žižek “. . . [E]xcellent case studies based on careful archival work that broaden our understanding of Latin America’s experience of the Cold War in the twentieth century.”
Paulo Drinot
Cold War History
“The combined expertise of Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph makes A Century of Revolution analytically rich, especially in describing of the growing agency of mass organizations. . . . A Century of Revolution offers a nuanced theoretical framework, which can help historians interested in new models of analysis to explain the dynamics of late-twentieth-century Latin America.”
Alejandro Quintana
History: Reviews of New Books
“Yet few works provide a perspective as wide-ranging as A Century of Revolution. This important collection — with its careful attention to causes, processes, and outcomes — goes a long way toward debunking the widespread view that political violence is ‘natural’ to Latin America.”
Michael Gobat
Hispanic American Historical Review
“A Century of Revolution has much of value to offer. . . . The ten essays by Latin Americanists in A Century of Revolution bear out the considerable historiographical value of the reinterpretive efforts in which Grandin and Joseph have been engaged for over a decade.“
Arthur Schmidt
A Contracorriente
"A Century of Revolution offers the field a new way to periodize and organize instances of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary violence. . . . [It] provides a powerful corrective, illuminating how world-historical events like the overthrow of Salvador Allende or the bola of the Mexican Revolution were anything but predetermined, reconstructing the cycles of escalation and radicalization that produced them, and chronicling the unstable chemical reactions sparked as the twin Furies of rebellion and reaction met."
Kristen Weld
Latin American Research Review
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