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Literary Review
Peru: a Country Study, edited by Rexford A. Hudson
Review by James Rudolph

Cover art: Thumb-size figurine adorns a gold and turquoise ear ornament found in a Moche tomb's sealed chamber

Peru: a Country Study is one of over 100 books prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program.

Like its sister volumes in the series, Peru: a Country Study contains five chapters: History, the Society and its Environment, the Economy, Government and Politics, and National Security. Rex Hudson was fortunate to attract some of the finest scholars on Peru in the US to author these chapters: Peter Klarén (history), Paul L. Doughty (society and its environment), John Sheahan (economy), Carol Graham (politics) and David Scott Palmer (security).

These authors brought their considerable knowledge to bear in this overview of Peru's past and present realities. There's no specialization here - just broad-brush analyses of Peru's principal historical periods; its geography; its social aspects, including demography, class structure, religion, education and health; economic structures, production, policies, and issues; the governmental system; political parties, interest groups, and issues; foreign relations; and internal and external security structures and issues. There's a little bit for every reader here, but mostly, Peru: a Country Study is a good, non-scholarly introduction to the country we have adopted. It also has a lengthy bibliography for those who wish to pursue particular aspects in depth.

The 422-page hardbound version of Peru: a Country Study can be purchased on-line from the book's publisher (US Government Printing Office) or from Amazon.com for $40. The book is available free of charge on the internet at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/petoc.html or at a number of other web sites that have copied the text (which is a product of the US government and so, is not copyrighted). The full text is available in a series of files of manageable proportions in the web version, where a search engine conveniently replaces the detailed index of the hardbound version.

Having been researched in the early 1990s and published in 1993, this volume has become out-of-date in some areas. Nonetheless a great part of the text, particularly in its first three chapters, still remains remarkably pertinent more than a decade after its publication.

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