panish Civil War. Analyzing the reasoning behind their attitude and theirsubsequent return to Spanish values, the author’s central theme seems to be thatpeople of Latin America have always had some need or underlying desire to havean element of Spanish culture and direction in their lives on many levels. Theauthor argues this theme well in a clear concise way thereby providing enoughlogical evidence to support the thesis that “(there has always been) . . . a consciouseffort of Spaniards and Spanish Americans to establish close spiritual, andsometimes also economic and political ties, often with the specific purpose ofbulwarking the prevailing social system throughout the Hispanic world.” Thethirteen chapters of this book provide more than adequate evidence to support thistrend and Pike takes his argument one step further by addressing in the lastchapter both the strength and weaknesses of his thesis, thereby leaving no issueuntouched which in the end does more to bolster his thesis into a solid logical onewith all issues addressed. Frederick B. Pike, professor of history at Notre Dame (now retired) haspublished numerous books in a long career in Latin American history. Certainlynot an antiquestrian the author is a serious Latin Americanist and this is clearlyshown by his knowledgeable writing in this book. Tackling a complex and broadsubject such as Hispanismo seems not to be an easy task with many different partiesand factors going into each side's issues, and there are both many sides and manyissues, but the author seems to pull this off extremely well without confusing thereader unduly. Pike accomplishes this by giving the reader an adequatebackground of both Spanish America and Spain before simply jumping headfirstand blind into his argument. The author seems to have no unneeded biases ofarguing unduly the merits of only one side even though he focuses mainly onCentral and Latin American conservatives, ta...
