This is an ambitious book that attempts to understand the formation of collective identity through the study of printed works, and as such it is a welcome addition to the study of the rioplatense region, providing new insights and possible paths for future scholarship. It is also a remarkable attempt to understand reading in a non-traditional way, paying attention not only to the well-studied intellectual elites and their books, but also to other printed forms that helped to develop reading practices. Those interested in these significant ideas will find in Everyday Reading an important and relevant work.

The area of study is the River Plate region, and it has always been recognised that reading played an important role in both Argentina and Uruguay from the early days of independence. There are several goals that guide the organisation of the book; first, the analysis of how ‘literacy, written culture, and the clear public concern with writing and reading became both so widespread and integral to identity’ in these two countries (p. 2). Second, the understanding of ‘the special relationship between print, the public sphere, and politics in the Río de la Plata’ (p. 2); third, explaining the consequences of understanding print culture as ‘formed through the bonds that connect reading publics – both literate and illiterate – to print media and texts, which often go beyond the scope of the written word’ (p. 3). Given this approach, the author is concerned ‘with the relations between the practices of reading and writing, on the one hand, and social behaviors, individual and collective values, economic transactions, political decisions, state institutions, and ideologies, on the other’ (p. 3).

Based on such an understanding of print culture, ‘reading practices shape reading publics’, and this intersection becomes the element in the book that allows ‘print media to play a main role in the formation of collective identity, from nationalism to interpretations of gender’ (p. 4). Methodologically, the author acknowledges the work of James C. Scott, Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent, who inspired him to coin the term ‘everyday reading’. The existing body of research on the reading practices of the Enlightenment is practically not used, which is the main problem with this approach. In such an ambitious book we expect engagement with similar works dealing with the historical evolution, and significance, of reading. Robert Darnton, for example, warned us about the complexity of producing research that moves us from the description of reading materials (what was read) to understanding the meaning of the act of reading (how it was read). In this context, the absence of any mention of Darnton and his work, except for a bibliographical reference, is quite puzzling. This scholar is particularly relevant with respect to his treatment of popular texts, and his dissident view on the role of the intellectual elites in the Enlightenment culture, akin to what is proposed in Everyday Reading. The comparison with other Latin American nations is appropriate, but it is also necessary to understand the reception of Enlightenment culture in Argentina and Uruguay in connection to its differences from and similarities to what happened in Europe. This absence may explain why the book does not provide a good historical understanding of what reading meant at different times, and how the literary superiority of the River Plate area is connected with a wider intellectual movement that had roots outside its borders. For example, even though comparative literacy rates among Latin American nations are mentioned several times, the author does not clarify the reasons for such differences, or the different reading practices that explain this fact. Argentina and Uruguay were not the only countries that had a culture of pamphlets, priests reading from the pulpit, or popular poetry. These practices in themselves are not exclusive to any Latin American country at the time; if the degree to which the conflict between Rosas and his rivals transformed the uses of everyday reading was really fundamentally different, this should have been explained in more detail. The liberals manipulated and distorted Rosas’ interest in printing, as demonstrated by his use of pamphlets and popular verses to ridicule his enemies. The ways in which the governor of Buenos Aires used propagandists to denigrate certain ideas must be examined more carefully. Pedro de Angelis is mentioned, but not José Rivera Indarte, now forgotten but probably the best-known propagandist of the exile community by the late 1840s.

The treatment of gender is another area that needed more historical clarification in the book. Women from good families were quite interested in reading, sometimes even more than men, but it is not clear how this fits into the process of identity formation, one of the main targets of the book. This lack of a more detailed historical account, particularly in relationship to Enlightenment culture or the scientific literature of the late nineteenth century, makes Everyday Reading run the risk of naturalising the alleged superiority of the River Plate region in literary matters. Obviously this is not the intention of the author, but the lack of a more precise explanation for the meaning of reading is confusing in some sections. Perhaps the inclusion of additional writings by Jorge Myers, and the work of Ricardo Salvatore and Graciela Batticuore, could have strengthened some of the book's claims regarding the connection of printed culture, the popular classes and identity.

Finally, I must add that these observations do not change the fact that this is an important book, and one whose few flaws are also important in order to suggest more lines of inquiry in the future. Those who read it will surely be convinced of the importance of print culture even for those who were not members of the elite and did not pursue political power. New and important scholarship will emerge as a result of following the questions raised by this book.