Encyclopedia of U.S. military interventions in Latin America /

This two-volume encyclopedia defines military interventions and their scope to include indirect interventions, as in proxy wars and support for dictatorships. Included are entries on obvious topics, such as the invasion of Grenada and the occupations of Cuba and Nicaragua, as well as lesser-known episodes (the Baltimore affair) and broader concepts related to the central theme (e.g., articles on women and race). Editor McPherson (Univ. of Oklahoma) smartly instructed contributors to summarize the connections to military intervention in the first paragraph of each entry, maintaining the focus throughout. The scope, however, naturally emphasizes actors at the state and international levels: politicians, militaries, and governments. This approach means that the power of the general populace and its roles in these historical episodes--whether through protests, movements, or membership in civic organizations--sometimes is neglected. The index is inconsistent, making the electronic edition with full-text searching a more attractive option. For example, the index listing for Chile refers readers only to the main article on the country; other countries are more completely indexed throughout. Both content and copy editing could have been tighter, as evidenced by typographical errors and similar articles with entire paragraphs duplicated word for word, e.g., those on Thomas Mann and the Mann Doctrine. Summing Up: Optional. Lower-division undergraduates, general readers. L. Gardinier University of Iowa