"Bastards Tongues is gossipy, vain and pugilistic—in other words, all the juicy things an academic memoir should be but too rarely is."—Michael Erard, The New York Times Book Review

"Bolaño was a difficult, angry, self-reflexive writer who lived an erratic and occasionally unpleasant life. And Americans, as the head of the Swedish Academy has annoyingly but rightly pointed out, don't read much fiction in translation anyway. But when the first of Bolaño's major novels, The Savage Detectives, a massive, bizarre epic about a band of avant-garde Mexican poets, was published in the U.S. last year, it instantly became a cult hit among readers and practically a fetish object to critics. Bolaño's second (and last) major novel is titled 2666, and if anything, it is even more massive and more bizarre. It is also a masterpiece, the electrifying literary event of the year."—Lev Grossman, Time 

"Bombal—with her bold disregard for simple realism in favor of a heightened reality in which the external world reflects the internal truth of the characters' feeling, and with her deliberate mingling of fantasy, memory and event—is the precursor of the magical realism that is the flower of South American writing today . . . [the novel] awake[s] a feeling of genuine discovery, of minds and hearts not borrowed from European literature but indigenous to a New World of thought and feeling."—

"Carpentier's writing has the power and range of a cathedral organ on the eve of the Resurrection."—The New Yorker

"Dan Erikson unravels the multiple arguments that swirl about Cuba between Cubans on both sides of the Straits of Florida, the governments in Washington and Havana, and those for whom Cuba is the cause of either glorious revolution or brutal repression. He sheds light on substantive policies, stylistic differences, and deeply-held public values in clear, accessible prose, with fascinating stories that illustrate the larger drama."—Jorge I. Domínguez, Professor of Government, Harvard University

"A Challenging meditation on politics, love and the burden of history itself . . . What lingers most in this profound work are the images that convey the wonderous grandeur of a society in transformation. The Old Gringo is a brilliant fiction, a luminous and compelling chronicle."—Henry Mayer, San Francisco Chronicle

"This is more than a retranslation of a masterpiece. It amounts to a restoration: here is the magnificent book that Fuentes wrote originally, superbly rendered by Alfred Mac Adam into an English version that precisely meshes with Fuentes's Spanish."—Douglas Day

"The simplicity of these 300 vignettes belies their complexity. They read less like stories and more like prose poetry: each word carefully chosen, each phrase evocative of an entire action or mood . . . [Galeano] entwines family history with highly subjective and selective accounts of geological events, South American history, scientific discoveries, and anthropological observations. The results are disturbing; human inhumanity is a frequent topic."—Library Journal

"The Americans who engineered countless military coups, death squads and massacres in Latin America never paid for their crimes—instead they got promoted and they're now running the 'War on Terror.' Grandin had always been a brilliant historian, now he uses those detective skills in a book that is absolutely crucial to understanding our present."—Naomi Klein, author of No Logo

“Magic happens when a gifted historian and master storyteller finds a treasure trove of untapped materials to exploit. And Greg Grandin’s book on Fordlandia is simply magical. Here is the truly epic tale of American adventurers dispatched by Henry Ford in 1928 to conquer and civilize the Amazon by constructing an industrial/agricultural utopia the size of Tennessee. Among the dozens of reasons I will be recommending Fordlandia to friends, family, colleagues, and students is the scale and pace of the narrative, the remarkable cast of characters, the brilliantly detailed descriptions of the Brazilian jungle, and what may be the best portrait we have of Henry Ford in his final years as he struggles to recapture control of the mighty forces he has unleashed.”—David Nasaw, the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of Andrew Carnegie

“Timothy Henderson has a gift for writing history. The individuals, the battles, and the results remain the same, but his narrative has a fresh, exciting quality. His engrossing history will hold the attention of undergraduate students and grizzled experts. He has written the best short history available.”—William H. Beezley, Professor of History, University of Arizona

"Lively, objective and highly accurate . . . Mr. Henderson's volume is remarkable for its clarity and concision . . . Few U.S. historians have attempted to examine the conflict that became the War of 1847, as the Mexicans know it, from the Mexican standpoint. In this slender, concise study, Timothy J. Henderson seeks to rectify that . . .  For an understanding of present-day problems with U.S.-Mexican relations, this volume is a good place to start."—The Dallas Morning News

"A lively, well-drawn rendering of Guevara's eventful life—not out of place in a fashionista's handbag, but worthy of a more serious audience as well."—Kirkus Reviews

“The Shock Doctrine is Klein’s ambitious look at the economic history of the last 50 years and the rise of free-market fundamentalism around the world . . . Klein provides a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries, and the human toll. She paints a disturbing portrait of hubris, not only on the part of Friedman but also of those who adopted his doctrines, sometimes to pursue more corporatist objectives. It is striking to be reminded how many of the people involved in the Iraq war were involved earlier in other shameless episodes in United States foreign policy history.”—Joseph E. Stiglitz, The New York Times Book Review

"It is Levy's light touch in tense situations—when a white friend's father calls a black girl 'darkie' and 'coon' in Faith's presence, when she interacts with villagers in the English countryside—that allows us to experience rather than merely watch Faith's growing disillusionment . . . At times, you might even be tempted to read bits and pieces aloud, just to hear the lyrical quality of the Jamaican-accented English. Though Levy writes specifically about black Jamaican Britons and their struggles to be acknowledged as full members of the larger society, her novel illuminates the general situation facing all children of postcolonial immigrants across the West, from the banlieue of France to the Islamic neighborhoods of New York to the Hispanic ghettos of Los Angeles."—Uzodinma Iweala, The New York Times Book Review

"Dancing to 'Almendra,' [Mayra Montero's] ninth novel, [is] lovingly translated by Edith Grossman: a flawless little book with a deceptively light touch . . . I devoured [the book] with absolute delight, and I'm looking forward to reading it again, and to reading anything Montero might come up with next. It's tempting to think in categories . . . but a good novel denies them, nimbly and without visible effort. This novel is great fun to read, and a paradoxical thing to contemplate. When I was done, I wasn't sure if it was an especially well-written genre story, or a literary book based upon an especially raffish plot. Perhaps there's no difference between the two, after all."—Jim Lewis, The New York Times Book Review

"Perhaps the most popular modern poet in the world, the Chilean-born Neruda won the Nobel Prize for an enormous body of verse that includes introspective lyrics of love and lust; sinuously enthusiastic elemental odes to artichokes, watermelon, salt, Walt Whitman and the human eye; declamations in favor of the labor movement, the Communist Party and the working people of any nation; and involuted late poems of self-doubt. Perhaps no serious writer of verse since Whitman has combined so much scholarly attention with so much enthusiasm in a broad international public . . . Memoirist, critic and translator Stavans has culled this useful portable volume, with its facing-page English and Spanish."—Publishers Weekly

"A nation's narrative rendered through a personal prism, this evocative work succeeds where many similar efforts fail.  The secret?  Paternostro herself, a deservedly celebrated journalist, able to deftly interweave past and present and write with a compassion that resists pathos.  A child of relative privilege, she left a violently changing Colombia for the States at age 15; decades later she returned as a reporter, and what follows is revelatory.  Wrenching interviews with today's Colombians, unflinching descriptions of the horrors wrought by drug cartels and paramilitary groups, and unusual details keenly conveyed amount to a moving, highly memorable take on how a country lost its moorings."—The Atlantic

"Reid-Henry writes with circumstantial detail, yielding, among other things, a touching inventory of the things Guevara carried: a photograph of his wife, copies of Marx and Lenin and an inhaler for asthma. Illuminates unexplored corners in the revolutionary history of Latin America and gives a sympathetic but not uncritical view of a genuine friendship."—Kirkus Reviews