Providing a concise introduction to a history as complicated, fascinating and perplexing as that of Argentina is no simple task. But this latest one-volume history offers a valuable Spanish-language guide for students and others seeking a general orientation to Argentina's past. Specialists focused on other Latin American societies could also benefit from the book's panoramic view, which may aid in updating stale lectures and reconsidering familiar assumptions. The contributors to this volume are renowned figures in the field who draw on decades of teaching and research experience. Although political history receives the most sustained attention throughout, the book integrates numerous genres and subfields. Moreover, the volume makes a vast chronological sweep from around 14,000 years ago to the present day, subdivided into ‘four great moments’: the arrival and consolidation of the original human settlers, the colonial period, the process of independence and national organisation, and the contemporary era and recent past (p. 14). Within this temporal framework, an introduction and seven chapters cover major trends and episodes, while explaining key terms for a broad audience.

The volume begins with a brief introduction by Pablo Yankelevich that paints a geographic and regional portrait of the territory that we now call Argentina. While the introduction lays out the volume's overall organisation and goals, the treatment of historiography is kept to a bare minimum, in keeping with the style of this book series. Likewise, in an attempt to privilege ‘readability’, there are no notes and other scholarly apparatus, aside from a short bibliography. Nevertheless, it might have been useful, for the specialist, but also for the curious reader, to have included a discussion of how this volume's approach differs from similar surveys and earlier scholarship. Perhaps defining a single interpretive line for a multi-authored collection would be difficult, but this silence makes it harder to appreciate the volume's particular contributions.

For instance, the very fact that approximately one-third of this book is devoted to the prehispanic and colonial eras marks something of a departure from convention. In accounts of the making of modern Argentina, there has been a tendency to downplay the significance of Spanish colonialism, and, to a far greater degree, the long and continuing influence of indigenous peoples. Rather than beginning with a perfunctory tour of ‘pre-independence’ times, Historia mímima de Argentina examines the modes of organisation that existed prior to the nation. Raúl Mandrini's chapter shows the diversity of indigenous societies in prehispanic times. It contests the engrained view of Argentina's indigenous societies as static and primitive by stressing their adaption to different ecological zones across an enormous territory and to changing natural and human-made conditions. Jorge Gelman's chapter on the colonial period traces an arc from initial Spanish contact with these societies to the consolidation of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. The chapter situates this case in comparison with other Iberian possessions in the Americas, and it draws attention to the significance of the slow, prolonged process of conquest in Argentina that resulted in a variety of colonial social and economic systems.

By contrast, the history of Argentina's tumultuous nineteenth century is compressed into one chapter, albeit a long and thorough one, by Pilar González Bernaldo de Quirós. Her chapter covers a great deal of ground, advancing from the collapse of the Spanish Empire to the boom in export-led growth at the turn of the twentieth century. This survey is strongest on the politics of nation-building through the 1880s, but it also identifies significant intellectual trends and socio-economic transformations. This emphasis reflects an overall characteristic of the volume and, to a degree, the traditional drift of Argentine historiography: namely, the attention to social and environmental issues that characterises the early chapters declines in the second half of the book, especially as we enter the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, giving over more space to political and intellectual concerns.

The four chapters on this latter era provide skilful syntheses of the history of the Argentine Republic. In his tour through the early twentieth century, Marcelo Cavarozzi considers the factors behind the rise and fall of Argentina's experiment with republican politics under the Radical Party and the reasons behind growing military involvement in affairs of state. Loris Zanatta employs a similar approach in his treatment of the First Peronism (1943–55). His chapter delves into the origins and characteristics of Peronism, in particular, the techniques of rule employed by President Juan Perón and other state authorities, as well as anti-Peronist responses. Marcos Novaro completes this sequence of chapters by exploring the politics of dictatorship and democracy in the century's final half. His analysis illuminates one of the era's most notable shifts: the transition from a nation characterised by fractious disputes over rival political models to one generally committed to democratic principles but burdened by worsening socio-economic exclusions. The closing chapter by Carlos Altamirano serves as a conclusion of sorts by spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through a careful investigation of key intellectual controversies, like the university reform movement of the 1910s, the contests of Peronism/anti-Peronism, and the struggle for democracy, Altamirano adds further nuance to the trends addressed in the preceding chapters.

Instructors looking for a Spanish-language introduction to Argentine history should certainly consider this work. There are other resources that take alternative approaches to the subject, such as the single-authored Jonathan C. Brown's A Brief History of Argentina (now in translation), the two-volume Historia de las clases populares en la Argentina, and the multi-volume collection Nueva Historia Argentina, among others. Ultimately, the true test of a book like Historia mínima de Argentina will be its reception by students and readers, but in light of its solid scholarship one expects that it will prove a useful reference.