One of the traits that has marked the historiography of Argentina since the mid-1980s has been the reemergence of political history. Moreover, political history has been partially transformed by its integration with social and cultural history. This renewal of interest after the return of democracy in Argentina should not be surprising. Longstanding and massive political failure permitted the horrific military regime to seize power in 1976. Clearly, historians want to find the roots of that failure, but also to find elements of the political culture worth preserving. One cannot say that politics does not matter. Numerous well-done monographs and shorter pieces have appeared in recent years, focusing not only on the capital but also on the provinces. The work on the provinces has usually come in the form of chapters in collective works. This attention to the provinces is a welcome trend, since as so much of Argentine historiography has been Buenos Aires centered and as is obviously the case, the rest of the country is not the capital.

The book under review is very much part of this larger intellectual effort. The authors first presented the chapters in a conference at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in November, 1998. The focus is on the provinces of Córdoba and Buenos Aires. Like all collections, some of the contributions are stronger than others, but with the exception of the first and the last chapters, which are keynote presentations, there is a strong sense of intellectual cohesion built around the creation of political identities.

It is impossible in a relatively short review to comment on all the articles, but I do want to highlight certain trends. The first segment contains five chapters on the period between 1880 and 1930 in the provinces of Córdoba and Buenos Aires. For example, Javier Moyano presents a picture of how local elite rivalries in Córdoba intersected with national power to produce political change as the influence of Julio Roca waned. Marcela Ferrari, by examining over-all vote totals in gubernatorial elections in the Province of Buenos Aires between 1913 and 1931, demonstrates the stability of voter identity by its habit of voting Radical. Gardenia Vidal addresses a topic --the role of the church in Argentine society-- that has only recently received the attention it deserves. She has questioned, for Córdoba, Loris Zanatta's generalizations that in the 1930s the Catholic Church re-inserted itself into the political culture. She argues that the Church always had a political presence in Córdoba, but when its influence came under attack in the university reform movement of 1918, a major revival of its political influence occurred, including the creation of a Catholic party.

The next section, composed of four chapters, focuses on the years between the rise of Peronism and 1960. Two of the chapters look at the Revolución Libertadora in a national setting: María Estela Spinelli's historiographical essay and Julio César Melon's examination of two key moments to see whether they were really attempts to integrate Peronists into the new political system. The latter is particularly strong. On a very different scale, César Tcach examines the weakness of the UCRI in Córdoba during the presidency of Arturo Frondizi. Despite being able to win the governorship, Tcach shows convincingly that it lacked an ideology and a structure but functioned in order to be close to power.

The final segment deals with political identity and ideas on revolution. Ricardo O. Pasolini presents an interesting and original piece that attempts to show how the work and thinking of a minor Communist intellectual, Juan Antonio Salceda, living in Tandil between 1950 and 1970, was shaped by the intellectual world created by the party. While Pasolini does not claim that Salceda was representative, he does demonstrate the party's impact. The three remaining articles look at the radicalization that occurred in Córdoba in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Mónica Gordillo continues her important studies of working class political culture. Gabriela Closa and Alicia Servetto examine the impact of the spirit of the times on the Peronist and the Radical Parties, respectively.

This volume gives us valuable additional pieces to help fill out the puzzle of Argentine politics during the twentieth century. It also demonstrates the high level of work being done away from Buenos Aires.