Recent Collections of Latin American Historical Documents

Abstract

For perhaps fifteen years, Scholarly Resources has published with great success imprints devoted exclusively to Latin American history. Although this press brings out various types of books, its most characteristic format is an edited collection of reprinted essays, original contributions, or documentary sources, often touching on an aspect of social history broadly defined. The three books discussed here are certainly of this type. Mills and Taylor skillfully put together the most distinctive compilation of original documents on and from colonial Spanish America yet assembled, accompanied by a select number of interpretive essays by other authors. Hahner brought together selections from nineteenth-century women's travelers accounts from Latin America that comment about the lives of women there. Finally, Beezley and Ewell collected original essays on representative individuals, usually from non-elite groups, from a two-volume set on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This single volume is a condensed version covering the two centuries, thus creating a short work very suitable for courses on the national period. Colonial Spanish America is designed to serve as a secondary reader in courses on the colonial period, complementing whatever textbook is assigned. But it is very substantial both in its length consisting of nearly 350 large pages packed