"Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888) is one of the major literary and political figures of nineteenth-century South America. An indefatigable nation builder of post-independence Argentina, he is remembered for his zeal in modernizing the nation while serving as President from 1868 to 1874. Of his several autobiographies, the best-known Recollections of a Provincial Past is one of the indisputable classics of Spanish American literature, as well as one of the earliest autobiographies written in the Americas in Spanish. " "Written in 1850 during Sarmiento's ten-year exile in Chile, the memoirs describe his childhood and adolescence in an Andean province whose customs were still those of a colony. Sarmiento presents his life as the triumph of civilization over barbarism and measures his wealth and strength by the accumulation of enriching personal and political experiences. Comparing himself to the newly independent Argentina, he claims to be a historically representative individual whose trajectory seves to illuminate contemporary South America. "--Jacket.