This is a roughly chronological account of about every armed conflict (some can hardly be called "wars") in Latin America from the Haitian Revolution to the Spanish-American War. Each conflict gets a brief background, an account of the fighting - with an operational focus on who went where when rather than battle details - and some concluding remarks about interesting features or underlying causes for the outcome. The mass of detail makes it inevitable that far from everything sticks, but hopefully one retains a general scaffold of the history.

All in all, I found it pretty good.

A very interesting and well researched book, Robert has spent many years trying to find a publisher for this two volume work, luckily Brassey's obliged. As a Professor of History at the National Defense University his area of expertise is Latin American military history, making this work the pinnacle of his research into areas where most historians rarely go. The volume covers many areas in this time frame from a military viewpoint rather than a social or political stance and as such it is a boon to people like myself who are interested in this field of research, a great book for all Latin Amercan military historians and normal military historians wanting to fill in a gap in their knowledge on this area. ( )

Scheina's three books are the best sources in English for an overview of Latin American military history. Each book is well footnoted and has an extensive bibliography. The Naval History volume covers riverine warfare, marine corps operations, and naval aviation, often overlooked in general naval histories. The earlier Naval History is the better written of the three books. (I suspect Scheina was told that he wouldn't get tenure if his writing continued to be pleasurable to lay readers.) Hagedorn's Latin American Air Wars is the best source for air operations. ( )