The Invention of Argentina was published in 1991 by the University of California Press. A Spanish translation was published in Argentina by EMECE/Planeta in 1993, translated by the distinguished Argentine novelist, César Aira. With the slightly expanded title of La invención de la Argentina: Historia de una Idea, the Spanish edition was updated, corrected, and somewhat expanded in 2005. The University of São Paulo Press published a Portuguese translation in 2008. All editions are still in print. The English and Spanish editions are available for e-readers. In 2023, EMECE/Planeta published a new edition to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the book’s appearance in Argentina. Selected by the The New York Times as “a notable book of the year”, the book garnered the following critical comments:

"This masterly intellectual and cultural history focuses on the 19th-century roots of Argentine nationalism and what Nicolas Shumway, now an emeritus professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas, calls its “guiding fictions”. His argument is that “this ideological legacy is in some sense a mythology of exclusion rather than a unifying national ideal, a recipe for divisiveness rather than consensual pluralism.” That legacy has shaped the past 100 years and lurks beneath the social conflicts, between rich and poor, capital and interior, that have marked the country’s long decline.” —The Economist

“This brilliant book tells the history of the histories that emerge in nineteenth-century Argentina … It reads like a novel, but is documented like a scientific treatise.” —Josefina Ludmer, University of Buenos Aires

“Original in conception and execution, full of interesting data and interpretations, useful and enlightening … [Shumway] is particularly good on the various uses to which history is put in Argentina.” —David Rock, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Working against the grain of conventional reading, Shumway’s book is an invitation to reread Argentina in a new and dynamic way—a challenging enterprise if one considers the resiliency of the cultural myths in that country. Shumway bids his reader to scrutinize the gallery of national heroes in a refreshingly different light.”

—Sylvia Molloy, New York University

An engaging account of the writing and debates of the remarkable group of ideologues who shaped Argentina’s destiny, several of whom rose to become presidents of the republic.” —David Brading, New York Times Book Review

“Shumway’s history of Argentine histories offers illuminating parallels and contrasts to the national experience of other parts of the world.”

—Peter Beck, Times Higher Education Supplement

“An important book. There are few countries where ghosts of the past haunt the present so relentlessly. Shumway offers us a clear, well-written, and extremely useful guide to the imaginings of the past and their persistence to this day.”

—Jeremy Adelman, Cambridge Journals, Latin American Studies

“A captivating, cultural history.”

—Chris Kline, The Times of the Americas

Check On Amazon