This set is more valuable, and more balanced, than the title suggests. Perhaps it can be argued that pretty much all US initiatives in Latin America have had at least the specter of US military strength in the background, but, fortunately, this encyclopedia covers economic and diplomatic initiatives in Latin America as well as actual uses of force. The Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps and other nonviolent US efforts in the region have chapters. So, of course, do the violent episodes committed by local actors with US assistance. A previously naive reader may come away with a darkened understanding of US actions in Latin America, but it’s not all about bullets and blood.

Besides nearly 350 entries, the encyclopedia includes several research aids. There is both a standard alphabetical table of contents as well as listings of entries grouped by related broad topics, such as “Cultural Issues.” At the end of the second volume, there are thirteen original documents, a glossary, and an index. There is also an overall bibliography, and each entry includes a list of references. Black and white illustrations—mostly portraits of key players—are frequent. The writer of each entry is identified at the end of it.

A ballpark comparison among reference resources can be made with Barbara A. Tenenbaum’s Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (Scribner’s, 1995) and Thomas M. Leonard’s Encyclopedia of Latin America (Facts of File, 2010). Tenenbaum’s project is almost twenty years older, so is out of date on a few subjects. The main difference, other than the obvious greater scope and size of Tenenbaum’s set, is that McPherson’s is focused on US leaders and actions. For example, both sets have sizable entries about the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, but McPherson’s then has a separate entry about the effects of Trujillo’s assassination on US policy.

The Leonard encyclopedia has four volumes that each cover a different era, the last being 1900 to the present, with entries in each volume organized alphabetically. That format feels awkward, and US interventions are certainly not the set’s focus; the Contras do not even have their own entry but are included in one about Central American wars of the 1980s. Nevertheless, the set offers several interesting research aids and is still current.

Benjamin R. Beede’s one-volume The War of 1898 and U.S. Interventions 1898–1934: An Encyclopedia (Garland, 1994) covers a bit of the same ground as McPherson but is more about US military history than US–Latin American relations. Michael Grow’s U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War (University Press of Kansas, 2008) is a monograph with full-scale chapters on each intervention it addresses but is limited to modern times.

The new set should be quite helpful to high school and college students new to this subject and could be of general interest in communities with strong Latin American cultural consciousness, but it would be supplementary to a broader set such as Leonard’s.