An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Latin America. Edited by Enrique Cárdenas, José Antonio Ocampo, and Rosemary Thorp. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Volume I: The Export Age: The Latin American Economies in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Pp. 329. $75.00. Volume II: Latin America in the 1930s: The Role of the Periphery in World Crisis. Pp. 297. $69.95. Volume III: Industrialization and the State in Latin America: The Postwar Years. Pp. 345. $75.00

These three volumes bring together a set of very useful essays on Latin American economic growth since the late nineteenth century. The first volume focuses on the so-called “export age,” the period 1870–1930. The second (a reprint of a volume originally published in 1984) focuses on the impact of the Great Depression and the process of recovery throughout the 1930s. The third focuses on state-led industrialization from the 1940s to the early 1990s. The essays in these volumes are, with few exceptions, organized around national histories. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico receive particular attention. Some of the volumes also include essays on Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, and Central America. The goal of the volumes is not to provide a synthesis of the literature on each country, running the gamut of economic sectors and the institutions that governed their growth, but to focus on a set of themes related to the industrial development of each country.