Originally published in French, this excellent study will find a place among the best new works on the disastrous Triple Alliance War (1864-70). Capdevila portrays the conflict as a "total war," by which he means that Paraguayan society as a whole coalesced into a single force confronting the Allied armies, paying a terrible price in consequence. That much is well known, but where Capdevila really makes a contribution is in his examination of the postwar transformation of the conflict into an {"epopeya nacional"} - used by nationalists, mainly of the Right, to bolster 20th-century dictatorship in the country. How these polemicists turned disaster into a kind of sympathetic triumph is a major tale in and of itself. Capdevila deserves kudos for throwing such a concentrated light on the topic. Another great contribution is in his reproduction of some 200 pages of notes made by the French consul in Asuncio n during the 1860s and early 70s; these should prove a boon to scholars wishing to better understand life in Paraguay at that perilous time. [TW]