Written by one of the leading historians of her generation, Historia de la juventud en la Argentina de los siglos XX y XXI is an essential book that addresses the history of youth in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries using two key approaches. The first involves conceiving of youth as a historical category that was born in close connection with an optimistic view of historical time, one which was also projected onto young people. The second entails recognizing that while the history of youth is worth studying in and of itself, it also provides insight for understanding Argentinian history and global dynamics.

According to Manzano’s hypothesis, the emergence of youth occurred at the intersection of structural dynamics (demographic, labor, and economic dynamics); social and state capacities that produced specific age markers through things like education, legal, and labor regulations, and compulsory military service; interventions by political and social forces that stimulated and organized young people; and, last but not least, entertainment and mass culture, which catalyzed, and at the same time shaped, identities, cultures, and experiences.

That hypothesis organizes the book chronologically. In the first chapter, Manzano outlines the demographic foundations of twentieth-century Argentina—a society that had been transformed by transatlantic migrations and a country with an overwhelmingly young population—a fact that explains the scarce importance given to youth as a unique category and experience. She then describes how that scenario changed as a result of the university reform and various political debates involving educators, intellectuals, and politicians that spoke to young people.

The second and third chapters examine the decades spanning the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. These decades were key in the emergence of youth because of both the entertainment industry and the structural changes driven by new state policies that increased secondary education enrollment and improved living conditions. Manzano also explores this period as one of growing youth engagement in political, religious, and civic movements, and she examines the role played by experts like educators, legal practitioners, and doctors, who viewed young people as a problem associated with sexuality-related anxieties that transcended Argentina. Those forces combined to yield shared experiences, identities, and representations that gave substance to youth in a country where the ripple effect of expanding work opportunities and public policies fostered inclusion.

Chapter 4 focuses on the political, cultural, and social unrest of the 1960s, with student and labor protests and the countercultural movement at its center. The subsequent chapter looks at youth during the period of rising political polarization and military dictatorship that followed. As the military regime sought to annihilate all forms of social and political protest, people between the ages sixteen and thirty came to account for 70 percent of the disappeared, a tragic figure highlighting the repressive “monitoring” that targeted young people. Manzano also explores how the dictatorship operated through education, employment, and the creation of school and soccer rituals. She further counters the dominant memory by documenting the fluctuating relationship between official spheres and rock culture, and she underscores the repoliticization of young people at the end of the dictatorship, viewing them as the vehicle for forging a democratic society.

The book’s final chapter and epilogue deal with the failure of the democratization program, which entailed the end of the promise of social inclusion (or mobility) that shaped contemporary Argentina. The resulting devastating picture—a somber structural, economic, and political scenario—is reflected in deep social ruptures, institutional violence, and the total collapse of the bridges which were previously available to young people through work, school, social activism, and politics, and which enabled them to aspire to a better future. I would like to believe that Manzano allows for a glimmer of hope to shine through in the cultural dynamism shown by young people today, with musical genres such as rock, rap, and cumbia villera (popular music), and the social capacities and possibilities they offer for paving a more hopeful path forward.