Literary Review

‘South America’, declared the North American Review in the early 19th century, ‘will be to North America what Asia and Africa are to Europe.’ ‘Not quite,’ says Greg Grandin. But also not for want of trying. America, América is the by turns woeful, despairing and ironic tale of the USA’s sustained attempts to turn its southern neighbours into clients or dependencies, if not colonies. But it is also a passionate plea for a re-evaluation of the place of Spanish America, so often shunted off into the ‘Global South’, in the evolution of the modern global