While the City Sleeps: A History of Pistoleros, Policemen, and the Crime Beat in Buenos Aires before Perón

While the City Sleeps is an extraordinary work of scholarship from one of Argentina’s leading historians about modern Buenos Aires society and culture. In the late nineteenth century, the city saw a massive population boom and urban development on a large scale. These changes came along with rampant crime, a chaotic environment in the streets and intense class conflict. In the two decades before the advent of Peronism, once this cycle was declining, the state expanded institutions intended to bring about social order and control. Caimari mined both police records and true crime reporting, bringing to life the underworld pistoleros, the policemen who fought them, and the crime journalists who brought their conflicts to light. In the process, she has crafted an incredible portrait of the rise of one of the world’s greatest cities.