In order to explore issues of representation and cultural negotiation in the 19th-century travel narratives in the Americas, Cabañas (Spanish, Michigan State U.) focuses on writers from the US who traveled to Latin America and Spanish American writers who traveled to North America. He finds a complex weave of discourse concerning race, culture, modernism, and democracy. Many of the elements survive in recent political rhetoric, he says. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)