Buenos Aires has been called the Paris of Latin America, and the comparison is just, for in style of life and city design Buenos Aires resembles not only the City of Light but also the other great world capitals—London, Rome, New York. Buenos Aires: 400 Years attests to the long, diverse, and fascinating life of this urban mass of some six hundred square miles and eleven million inhabitants, which began as a tiny palisaded outpost on the remote fringe of the Spanish Empire. That colonial past is skillfully described here, but so too is the future of Buenos Aires. Each essay reveals much about the sociological and economic life of the city and the dynamic history of its people. This informative volume derives from a conference held at the Library of Congress in September 1980, which was dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the founding of Buenos Aires. The conference was jointly sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin and the Municipality of Buenos Aires.

Stanley R. Ross (1921–1985) and Thomas F. McGann (1920–1982) were Professors of History at the University of Texas at Austin.