This article tells the story of how an important group of social scientists in Latin America turned away from the problems of underdevelopment to the possibilities for democracy. It focuses on a network of leading Latin American intellectuals and their North American counterparts brought together by material stringencies as well as intellectual and political concerns arising from the sweeping wave of authoritarianism in the region. Brokered by private institutions and mediated by personal encounters, the decade-long endeavors of the network reveal the mechanisms through which social scientific paradigms are undone and refashioned.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Oxford Handbook of the Brazilian Economy. Edited by Edmund Amann, Carlos R. Azzoni, and Werner Baer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 813. $150.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780190499983.

História económica de la Argentina en los siglos XX y XXI. By Claudio Belini and Juan Carlos Korol. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores, 2020, rev. ed. Pp. 7 + 396. ARS $1,290. ISBN: 9789878010380.

State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: The Rise and Fall of the Developmental State. Edited by Agustin E. Ferraro and Miguel A. Centeno New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. ix +436. $140.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107189829.

The Political Economy of Taxation in Latin America. Edited by Gustavo A. Flores-Macías New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp vii + 282. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781108474573.

The Public Good and the Brazilian State: Municipal Finance and Public Services in São Paulo, 1822–1930. By G. Anne. Hanley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 290. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780226535074.

Feeding the World: Brazil’s Transformation into a Modern Agricultural Economy. By Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp viii + 468. $32.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108460972.

The Mexican Heartland: How Communities Shaped Capitalism, a Nation, and World History, 1500–2000. By John Tutino. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. Pp 512. $39.50 hardcover. ISBN: 9780691174365.