Costumbrismo, or regionalism, was a nineteenth-century response to economic and political globalization. Latin America reacted against the homogeneity of the modern world by reinforcing specifically local tastes and histories. A far-ranging compilation of innovative essays, The Places of History reflects a "new costumbrismo", reacting against the pressures of today's dramatic cultural globalization. Topics range from Incan architecture to Chicano and Nuyorican habitats, from turn-of-the-century Argentine criminology to Caribbean homophobia. Other essays examine the rhetorics of independence and dictatorship, Mexican ambivalence to opera, the precarious survival of the Spanish language, and Brazil's move beyond monarchy.