Resources in Buenos Aires
Non-Fiction
The Argentina Reader: History, Culture, Politics, is a collection of essays, interviews, and commentary all documenting accounts of different aspects of Argentina.
The History of Argentina, by Daniel K. Lewis, covers the country’s history from the pre-Columbian era up to the crisis of 2001.
Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy, by Olivier Besancenot and Michael Lowy, is about the famous Marxist Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Maradona: The Autobiography of Soccer’s Greatest and Most Controversial Star by Diego Armando Maradona – pretty self-explanatory. Essential reading for anyone intrigued by Maradona’s outspoken persona and the obsession with football that preoccupies the country in general.
Fiction
Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges, is a collection of short stories and essays by the undisputed master of Argentine letters.
Martin Fierro, the gaucho epic by José Hernández, is considered the national poem of Argentina.
Blow-Up: And Other Stories by Julio Cortázar, a collection of surreal tales by another of Argentina’s great fabulists.
Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism, by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, 19th-century statesman and President, is about the nation’s development and culture in modern times.
The Peron Novel, by Tomás Eloy Martinez, is a fictional re-imagining of the mind and times of Juan Peron. Martinez also wrote a fictional account of Peron’s more famous wife, Santa Evita.
Imagining Argentina, by Lawrence Thorton, is about the political violence of the 1970s and the military dictatorship that it resulted from.
Tourism
DK Eyewitness Buenos Aires Top Ten, Pocket Travel Guide, August 2015, a guide to the city and its surroundings.
Lonely Planet Buenos Aires City Guide, August 2017 includes a pullout map and color photos and covers both the well-known and hitherto-unknown attractions of the city.
Other
Che Boludo! A Gringo’s Guide to Understanding the Argentines by James Bracken – this is a light-hearted dictionary of lunfardo, the colorful slang that defines much of the Spanish used by the locals.
