Examines Argentina’s most iconic female figures, from saints to pop singers, politicians to anarchists

Eva Peron remains Argentina's best-known and most iconic personality, surpassing even sporting superstars such as Diego Maradona or Lionel Messi, and far outlasting her own husband, President Juan Domingo Peron himself a remarkable and charismatic political leader without whom she, as an uneducated woman in an elitist and male-dominated society, could not have existed as a political figure. In this book, Jill Hedges tells the story of a remarkable woman whose glamour, charisma, political influence and controversial nature continue to generate huge amounts interest 60 years after her death. From her poverty-stricken upbringing as an illegitimate child in rural Argentina, Peron made her way to the highest echelons of Argentinean society, via a brief acting career and her relationship with Juan. After their political breakthrough, her charitable work and magnetic personality earned her wide public acclaim and there was national mourning following her death from cancer at the age of just 33.Based on new sources and first-hand interviews, the book will seek to explore the personality and experiences of 'Evita' and the contemporary events that influenced her and were in turn influenced by her. As the first substantive biography of Eva Peron in English, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in modern Argentinean history and the cult of 'Evita'."

In the colorful, tumultuous setting of postwar Argentina, Eva Peron wielded a power--spiritual and practical--that has few parallels outside of hereditary monarchy. In this "fascinating, frightening, straightforward" (Cleveland Plain Dealer) biography, Fraser and Navarro have produced "a work of great political sophistication. . . . Factual, nuanced, and absorbing" (Kirkus Reviews). Photos.

The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project. This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals. Among the musicals discussed are Camelot, Candide; Chicago; Company; Evita; Gypsy; Into the Woods; Kiss Me, Kate; A Little Night Music; Man of La Mancha; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Merry Widow; Moulin Rouge; My Fair Lady; Passion; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Singin' in the Rain; Stormy Weather; Sweeney Todd; and The Wizard of Oz. Complementing the author's earlier work, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, this book completes a two-volume thematic history of the genre, designed for general audiences and specialists alike.

Argues that President Obama intends to weaken America so that other nations may rise in the name of global fairness, claiming that a second Obama term would bring about defense cuts and increased dependence on foreign energy.

In this thrilling sequel to the author's Twisted Tango, former OSS officer Pete Benton finds himself in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1951, working for a Department of Justice task force investigating organized crime. When a member of the task force is found near dead from a brutal beating, Pete and his wife Mara are confronted with the possibility that they might be next to suffer from an attack. But a greater danger lurks when the Bentons unknowingly become the targets of revenge from the powerful first lady of Argentina, Evita Pern, still bitter over Pete's efforts to spy on her and Juan Pern six years earlier. David Friedman, the man who recruited Benton in Buenos Aires, is now working for the Central Intelligence Agency, continuing his relentless pursuit of Nazi war criminals. In that effort, Friedman himself is recruited by a beautiful Israeli intelligence officer to provide information on Nazi war criminals relocated by the CIA to the United States. Reunited in the nation's capital, the Bentons and Friedman find themselves caught up in a tangled web of intrigue, deceit, betrayal, and revenge that puts them all in peril.