From the mid-nineteenth century until the 1930s, many Latin American leaders faced a difficult dilemma regarding the idea of race. On the one hand, they aspired to an ever-closer connection to Europe and North America, where, during much of this period, "scientific" thought condemned nonwhite races to an inferior category. Yet, with the heterogeneous racial makeup of their societies clearly before them and a growing sense of national identity impelling consideration of national futures, Latin American leaders hesitated. What to do? Whom to believe?

Latin American political and intellectual leaders' sometimes anguished responses to these dilemmas form the subject of The Idea of Race in Latin America. Thomas Skidmore, Aline Helg, and Alan Knight have each contributed chapters that succinctly explore various aspects of the story in Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, and Mexico. While keenly alert to the social and economic differences that distinguish one Latin American society from another, each author has also addressed common issues that Richard Graham ably draws together in a brief introduction. Written in a style that will make it accessible to the undergraduate, this book will appeal as well to the sophisticated scholar.

Besides Berlin, Budapest was the fastest-growing capital city in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Parlor and Kitchen, the work of a microhistorian and historical anthropologist, describes the development of private spaces in this newly emerged metropolis.

Author Gábor Gyáni has chosen two distinct groups of contemporary society: the upper middle class and the working class, to present their homes, domestic culture and attitudes. At the same time the book offers a panoramic view of the everyday life of the entire society, on social segregation and mobility. Behind the visual details the author reveals a great deal about the value systems of the groups of society investigated.

Reconstructing minute details as well as case studies, the author has relied on archival sources, private documents, and statistical data. The text is accompanied by contemporary photographs, maps and blueprints.

This enlightening and interesting volume will be of interest not only to historians, anthropologists and sociologists, but also to the general reader with an interest in urban history.

Gábor Gyáni is founder and editor of the quarterly Budapest Review of Books. He is President of the Hungarian-American Historians' Committee and Secretary of the Urban History Workshop of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

A student of the late professor Péter Hanák, Gyáni is active in research into the urban and social history of modern Hungary and the theory and methodology of history writing.