Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Reassembling Social Security: A Survey of Pensions and Health Care Reforms in Latin America (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. xxvi+453, £75.00, hb.
They’re On Our Side : The United States and Right-wing Dictatorships, 1921–1965. Finally, the secondary sources are extraordinarily dated. For a book published in 2007, the latest work cited in the bibliography is from 1995, one of perhaps half a dozen sources from the 1990s. Thus, fascinating studies such as Frederick Pike’s 1995 work, FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy : Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos are nowhere to be found. Of more concern is the narrowness of the primary research. Despite the fact that Franklin Roosevelt figures prominently in the book’s title, no work was undertaken at the Roosevelt Presidential Library. The papers of Cordell Hull in the Library of Congress are also untouched. And although the decimal files for Nicaragua are scoured with some enthusiasm, other collections such as the Records of the Office of American Republic Affairs, 1918–47, Records of the Deputy Assistant Secretaries of State for Inter-American Affairs, and other rich sources in Record Group 59 are ignored. The complete lack of sources from the Nicaraguan side is also troubling, since much of Crawley’s thesis rests on the notion that Nicaraguan politicians and parties were highly influenced by the United States’ action (or inaction). Andrew Crawley has produced a fairly well written book with some interesting ideas. The serious gaps in both the primary and secondary research undertaken by the author, however, seriously compromise the main thesis and reduce the monograph’s overall contributions to the field.