Now in its third edition, this leading reader has been updated to make it even more relevant to the study of contemporary Latin America. This edition includes an entirely new chapter, _The New Left Turn,_ and the globalization chapter has been thoroughly revised to reflect the rapid pace of change over the past five years. The book continues to offer a rich variety of materials that can be tailored to the needs of individual instructors. By focusing each chapter on a single interpretive _problem,_ the book painlessly engages students in document analysis and introduces them to historiography. With its innovative combination of primary and secondary sources and editorial analysis, this text is designed specifically to stimulate critical thinking in a wide range of courses on Latin American history since independence.