In their study of the evolution, institutionalization, and eventual fragmentation of Peronism in Argentina, Madsen and Snow focus scholarly attention on precisely the issues that most interested Weber himself… This compact and cogent book manages to clarify many points in Weber’s original treatment, and makes a compelling argument about the nature and development of Peronism.
-- Stephen Hanson Journal of Interdisciplinary History

An excellent small volume that can be read with profit by many social scientists and historians who are making similar kinds of scholarly inquiry… The book is lucidly written, innovative and astute.
-- Dwaine Marvick, University of California, Los Angeles

A pleasure to read… This is by all odds the best ‘theoretical treatment of charisma I have read since reading, forty years or so ago, Max Weber’s famous treatment of the topic… It is urbane, sophisticated, clearly written, and, above all, a ‘true’ extension of Weber’s original conception of the charismatic phenomenon. The authors have a firm grip on the relevant literature without making this a dull ‘literature review.’ Rather, they use the literature to develop their own (and, I think, proper) conception. But this is not all of it: they draw, with imagination, on a related research literature to bolster the original Weberian treatment.
-- Heinz Eulau, Stanford University

An excellent job… It lays out an important theoretical argument about the nature of charisma—that it depends on the proper environmental situation (in this case, the after-effects of a severe economic crisis), as well as, presumably, the personal leadership characteristics that are more usually the focal point of analyses of charisma… It is methodologically sophisticated. It is a brief book that makes a nice argument, well supported by the data.
-- David O. Sears, University of California, Los Angeles