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| Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism (Penguin Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Domingo F. Sarmiento
Creators: Ilan Stavans, Mary Peabody Mann
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $0.25
You Save: $15.75 (98%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (4 reviews)
Sales Rank: 441087
Languages: Spanish (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0140436774
Dewey Decimal Number: 982.04
EAN: 9780140436778
ASIN: 0140436774
Publication Date: October 1, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Written in political exile by one of Argentina's greatest statesmen and intellectuals, this work is ostensibly a biography of the gaucho "barbarian" Juan Facundo Quiroga. It is also a complex and passionate investigation of the dialectic of civilization and barbarism. Sarmiento explores the impact of Argentinian geography on the life of the gaucho, chronicles the upbringing and the often bloody political and military adventures of Facundo, and examines the reign of Juan Manuel de Rosas, the tyrannical ruler of Argentina at the time of Sarmiento's writing.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Bored and slightly Overdrawn May 10, 2007
0 out of 8 found this review helpful
I am currently a history major and took an Argentina class because I thought it would be interesting, this book was not interesting in the least. Sarmiento's book, Facundo, is during the revolutionary stage in Argentina. There is to much emphasis placed on trying to describe in great detail mundane things while not getting to the important issues at hand. On the parts that I thought would be of the utmost importance they were explained in very vague terms which half the time I did not know what he was getting at.
 Neither vague nor an "account" March 4, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is NOT, like other reviewer says, an account of Revolutionary Argentina in the 19th century (the period of civil war that followed the independence from Spain). This is not a book of history. Sarmiento is much more than a mere witness/narrator of a period. He is a man of letters, a writer -and one of the very best from Argentina- it takes you only the reading of the first sentence "Oh, Shadow of Facundo..." to realize that you are in the dark territory of myth, not of the clean, sunny history classroom.
This book, like many great books, escape the incarceration of genre, but if there is one thing it demands from the reader is a capacity for being amazed, for being swept away by the story and the writing itself.
Vague Account of Revoultionary Argentina October 6, 2005
3 out of 12 found this review helpful
There are very few primary sources one can find when studying Latin American revloutions, with Argentina being the subject here. This being a primary source, isn't one that should be taken for an overall look on the Argentina Revoultion. Sarmiento has a sort of bias that shouldn't be taken too seriously. It is hard to get really a good account of Juan Facundo Quiroga because he is such a vague figure in Argentinian history. This is probably the only elaborate interpretation of the figure. Sarmiento also has a sort of habit to go off on tangents on things that are totally irrelevant to the subject matter at hand.
Domingo F. Sarmiento is of European descent and has a biased for "civilization" and defies everything that is "barbaric" as he puts it, which really is what the story is about, and his protest to Rosas one of the leaders of Argentina at the time this story was written who is also "barbaric". The author compares "civilizations" and "barbarism" and how the "barbaric" gauchos are a threat to society. Facundo is a gaucho and is interpreted by Sarmiento as a dicator who made is way to the top by hate and carelessness and is partially at fault for the state of "deterioration" that Argentina was presently in during mid-19th century Argentina.
All criticism aside, one does get good descriptive imagery of the man that was Juan Facundo Quiroga. Due to the fact that this book was written on a sort of bias, it would be better if it was written under a more accurate scholarly account, but then again it is a novel and that is what makes it interesting. It is by no means a useful primary source.
 one classic argentine's book May 20, 2001
23 out of 25 found this review helpful
It's difficult to classify "Facundo" written by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (argentine thinker, politician and educator) in 1845: it is at the same time history, myth, essay, pamphelt and sociological discourse. It was published for first time as a newspaper serial in Chile where Sarmiento was in exile and written against Rosas'dictatorchip in Argentina. The text is influenced by the Enlightment and specially by the romanticism. Because of the romantic influence, it tells Facundo Quiroga's biography since for romantic'stream a "great man" (Facundo in this case) expresses an epoch. This book has the intention of solving an enigma: how independence's revolution in Argentina (1810) reached Rosas ' dictactorship (1835-1852) This drama, product of the revolution, was caused by the combination of 2 elements which shouldn't have been combined: the city, civilization's field, and the countryside, barbarism's field. The book can be read as the city and the countryside were the characters.
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