"An excellent compilation of texts by 31 Argentine political commentators and polemecists from the 1846-80 era. Authors include Mitre, Sarmiento, Alberdi, Echeverría, José Hernández, and Vicente F. López. In his preliminary study, Halperín Donghi notes that only Argentina realized a measure of the material and political progess to which the rest of the continent aspired - and this reflected in no small part the farsightedness of its political thinkers"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.