Specular City

"This wonderful book presents a comprehensive and innovative view of Argentine culture between 1955 and 1973..[It] is a book that should be read by anyone interested in the cultural history of Argentina." Latin American Studies "Podalsky's study is an original contribution to the social and cultural history of the city [Buenos Aires], centering on the years that separate the fall of the first Peronist government (1955) and the triumph of the second (1973)." The Journal of Latin American Anthropology "Podalsky's book is a worthy entry in the renewed interest in the Argentine decade of the 1960s.[She] examines in excellent detail her own selective inventory of major cultural productions that interact with the enormous social and physical changes going on in the city during the period in question. What she [covers] is done admirably and intelligently and transmits well the enormous vibrancy of one of the continent's greatest cities." The Americas "I enjoyed this book immensely, not just because Podalsky leads the reader on an intriguing and well-structured journey through two turbulent decades of crisis and change. She weaves together literary narratives, films, music, ideology and architecture in a way that teases out crucial changes in the material landscape and highlights their ideological and practical significance. Specular City achieves its goal of highlighting the cultural trends in Buenos Aires that provided a bridge between the 1960s and 1990s." Urban Studies "This is a spectacular book about the imagination of matter and matters of the imagination in contemporary Buenos Aires. Laura Podalsky has presented us with a work of metamorphosis on two levels. First, on the methodological level, this book is a hope fulfilled. She has combined the best of cultural studies with astute applications of social geography and revealed for us the ways that high-rise apartments, sex in this city, movies and marketplaces animate this heart of Argentina. More than that, we learn the secrets, promises and lived urban practices in the minds and hands of an energetic Latin American middle class that revitalized the symbolic languages, built environments and consumptive practices in the years after Peron. Don't cry for Argentina! Read this book instead." --David Carrasco, Harvard Divinity School and Department of Anthropology