Evo's Bolivia

Linda C. Farthing is a writer and educator with twenty-five years of experience in Latin America as a solidarity activist, study-abroad director, field producer for films, and journalist/independent scholar.Benjamin H. Kohl was Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. They are coauthors of From the Mines to the Streets: A Bolivian Activist’s Life with FÉlix Muruchi and Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular Resistance, as well as numerous articles. They live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsChapter 1. Why Bolivia? Why Now?Chapter 2. Land of Unintended ConsequencesChapter 3. Capturing or Captured by Power?Chapter 4. "Reinventing" the State, Expanding Rights, and Navigating DependencyChapter 5. Continuity and Innovation in the EconomyChapter 6. Living Well/Vivir Bien: Government Transfers, Health, and EducationChapter 7. Land and Territory: The Enduring StruggleChapter 8. The Sacred Leaf at the Center: Reconceptualizing Drug PolicyChapter 9. The Path AheadNotesReferencesIndex

In Evo’s Bolivia, Farthing and Kohl engage in a probing analysis of these pressing issues that are critical to the survival of our planet. The result is a successful, thoughtful, and compelling book that is written in a fluid and accessible style. The narrative is interspersed with interviews the authors conducted across Bolivia. As a result, the book achieves an admirable balance of providing an excellent entry point for those with little background in Bolivia as well as key insights for scholars and activists with a long history in the country. (Upside Down World) Evo’s Bolivia should be read as the definitive history of what has arguably been the most significant decade in the history of that country, and in that of the Andean region. (The Americas) Evo's Bolivia is, in many regards, the chronicle of the post-neoliberal transition period that I had hoped for. Farthing and Kohl present an incisive analysis of the contentious political moment of Morales's election and the years immediately after. (American Association of Geographers Review of Books) What is unique about Evo’s Bolivia is its breadth and accessibility. The text is inter-spersed with anecdotes and direct extracts from interviews; these combined voices provide a vivid and engaging window onto the process of change as it unfolds. The book makes Bolivia legible to the uninformed reader and would be excellent material for undergraduate teaching. (Journal of Latin American Studies) In their insightful evaluation of the continuity and change within Evo’s Bolivia from 2009 to 2014, two well-established country experts, Linda Farthing and the late Benjamin Kohl, have done precisely that.  Thus it would be a mistake to dismiss this comprehensive, extensively researched and readable book as anything but excellent scholarship by two solidarity activists who are unafraid to be critical as well as thoughtful and balanced in their assessments of the positives and negatives of Bolivia’s first indigenous and social movements-dominated administration. (Latin American Perspectives)