A sweeping account of one of the cultural centers of Latin America, "Specular City tells the history of Buenos Aires during the interregnum after Juan Peron's fall from power and before his restoration. During those two decades, the city experienced a rapid metamorphosis at the behest of its middle class citizens, who were eager to cast off the working-class imprint left by the Peronists. Laura Podalsky discusses the ways in which the proliferation of skyscrapers, the emergence of car culture, and the diffusion of an emerging revolution in the arts helped transform Buenos Aires, and, in so doing, redefine Argentine collective history. More than a cultural and material history of this city, this book also presents Buenos Aires as a crucible for urban life. Examining its structures through the films, novels, and telenovelas that reflect Argentina's sense of its own culture, "Specular City reveals the representative power that Buenos Aires has for reflecting the massive change Latin America underwent in its struggle for a modern definition of itself.