Pop Culture Latin America!: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle (Popular Culture in the Contemporary World)

Part of the publisher's Popular Culture in the Contemporary World series, this book is intended as an overview of popular culture in Latin America since the 1940s. However, 404 pages are not enough to provide a good one. French-speaking areas on the continent and in the Caribbean are ignored, as are English- and Dutch-speaking areas. Shaw and Dennison (University of Leeds, England) and three additional contributors provide more of a random sampling than a complete survey. The chapters cover popular music, social movements and politics, sports, theater, travel and tourism, literature, mass media, cinema, religion, and more.

The arrangement within chapters is topical, with sections on specific topics such as Soccer and Tango arranged in no logical order. Without the index, it would be difficult to locate topics, and not all of them appear in the index. Some topics are covered in detail, but there are some significant and surprising omissions. For example, there is no mention of narcocorridos (Mexican songs celebrating lords of the drug trade) in the music chapter. Many topics, such as Brazil's pop star Xuxa and Mexico's upscale shopping district of Polanco, are discussed in political terms. The contributors clearly favor neither U.S. nor European influences, except for socialism and Marxism.

Each topical section has its own cross–references and bibliography. There are a glossary and a separate bibliography at the end of the volume and a chronology at the start. The book is illustrated with black-and-white photographs.

This is not a necessary purchase for public libraries except those with exhaustive Latin American collections. Academic libraries with Latin American collections may wish to consider it.