Tiempo Nublado

Written with a poet's sensibility and a diplomat's sense of history, these essays view a contemporary world poised between the upheaval of the 1960s and the uncertainties of the 1980s with vision, freshness, and depth. Whether focusing on the prosperity without grandeur of contemporary Europe, the inconsistencies of American "imperial democracy," the "paralyzed mammoth" of the Soviet totalitarian empire, or the ominous lesson of Iran and the pains and dangers of modernization, Paz's views of a dividing yet increasingly interdependent world are as clear as they are original. His closing plea for a Latin American style of democracy rooted in native traditions as an alternative to solutions tainted by violence provides an eloquent code to this sensitive and visionary collection of essays.