Book Description

The Latin American studies collections at many community, junior and four year colleges, and large public libraries often contain materials that are too specialized, uneven, outdated, incomplete, or written in Spanish or Portuguese--thus rendering them essentially useless to English-reading patrons. Better materials are out there, but librarians simply have not had, until now, a good resource guide to help in locating them.This work, designed as an acquisitions tool for colleges and libraries, is an annotated bibliography of approximately 1,400 recommended books published from 1986 through 2000 in the field of Latin American studies. It is divided into chapters that deal with reference works, descriptive accounts and travel guides, the humanities, language and literature, the social sciences, and science and technology. For the purposes of this book, Latin America is defined as all geographic locations south of the Rio Grande. While these are chiefly Spanish and Portuguese speaking regions, works about French, English, and Dutch speaking areas are also included. The literary works of authors living abroad are included if they are considered quintessentially Latin American. Periodicals, children's literature, audio-visual resources, and works about the Hispanic and Latino experience in the United States are not included. The majority of the works presented here were selected based on reviews from Booklist, Choice, Hispanic American Historical Review, Library Journal, Los Angeles Times Book Review, New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review and Publisher's Weekly; also consulted were the catalogs of major university presses that focus on Latin American studies.