Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Michael F. Fry is professor of Latin American history at Fort Lewis College, Colorado’s public liberal arts college in Durango, where he teaches an array of courses on Latin America, including the history of Central America. He has lived and conducted archival research in Guatemala during three extended sojourns there, the longest for three years, and he has made many shorter research trips.This entry from the Historical Dictionaries of the Americas series is an entirely new volume; a previous version by a different author appeared in 1973. . . . The more than 700 entries in the dictionary vary in length from a short sentence to a few pages and cover people, places, culture, politics, the economy, and more. The topics cover quite a bit of territory, from the kaqchikels (a large Maya ethnic and linguistic group), to Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, to Protestantism. Entries include generous cross-references. In the case of Catholicism, for instance, the list of see also references is longer than the entry itself. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography, divided into sections starting with an introduction and including materials on topics from the pre-Columbian period to the twenty-first century. A fair percentage of these materials refer to Spanish-language publications. Recommended.
American Reference Books Annual
The dictionary itself is an impressive achievement, combining biographical, architectural, artistic, historical, documentary, and linguistic information.
Hispanic American Historical Review
Guatemala holds a dual image. For more than a century, travel writers, explorers, and movie producers have painted the country as an exotic place, a land of tropical forests and the home of the ancient and living Maya. Archaeological ruins, abandoned a millennium ago, have enhanced their depictions with a wistful, dreamy aura of bygone days of pagan splendor, and the unique colorful textiles of rural Maya today connect nostalgically with that distant past. Inspired by that vision, fascinated tourists have flocked there for the past six decades. Most have not been disappointed; it is a genuine facet of a complex land. Guatemala is also portrayed as a poor, violent, repressive country ruled by greedy tyrants with the support of an entrenched elite—the archetypal banana republic. The media and scholarly studies consistently confirm that fair assessment of the social, political, and economic reality.
The Historical Dictionary of Guatemala contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Guatemala.
Editor’s Foreword
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Map
Chronology
Introduction
THE DICTIONARY
Bibliography
About the Author
The Historical Dictionaries of Latin America series has been changed to the Historical Dictionaries of the Americas in order to broaden the scope of the series. With a population of about a billion people, covering North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean, the Americas are a very large portion of the world and an exceedingly important one. While not the most populous, although the figures are growing rapidly, it is a powerhouse economically, in the north but also increasingly the south. And politically the countries are usually among the top players. The politics of this area range from democracy to dictatorships. Its not only a vast but also a variegated region, with some giant countries and some that are exceedingly small, some advancing rapidly economically and others struggling. Each of the historical dictionaries looks at the specific country or region very carefully and reports its findings in several different ways, all of which combine to create a better understanding. A general overview is provided in the introduction while the history is charted year by year in the chronology. But the bulk of the information comes in hundreds of cross-referenced entries on important persons, places, events and institutions relating to their history, politics, economy and culture. A list of acronyms makes it easier to follow the text while a bibliography directs readers towards numerous other, often more specialized sources.
Series Editor: Jon Woronoff