A major revision of a thirty-year-old standard anthology textbook on Latin America, this is the eighth edition. It is designed as an introductory text for college students from the US with no background in Latin American studies. While it retains some older uses of language (such as "miscegenation" for historical interracial marriage), it contains twenty new chapters by various experts, a few of whom are Latin American. New materal includes Venezuela after Chavez, Mexico and the ongoing drug war, Cuba under Raul Castro, and new administrations in Columbia, Uruguay, and Chile. Part one gives five chapters of introduction: Latin American politics; historical development; political parties and interest groups; government, the role of the state, and public policy; the struggle for democracy. Part two looks at a number of countries in South America chapter by chapter, Part three does the same with Central and Middle America and the Caribbean. The last section is a conclusion by the editors on Latin America and the future. Both editors are US academics; one is associated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. They follow a development model that visualizes the US as modern and Latin America as pre-modern but moving toward modernity, and defines the US as a European product of the Enlightenment and Latin America as a European product of feudalism. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com) Read Less