Evita: The Real Life of Eva Peron - Softcover

A fascinating, frightening, straightforward look at the way a private mythology integrated a public personality.

[The authors] have separated out the truth from the sinner/saint legend of Eva Peron--and, most impressively, produced a work of great political sophistication. . . . Factual, nuanced, and absorbing.

The Fraser/Navarro biography is the first convincingly researched and historically accurate account. . . . Engrossing narrative style.

The story begins in a dusty village lost in the Argentine pampas, where a girl, born out of wedlock, scrambles her way to the capital city by the time she is fifteen. It ends with the embalmed corpse of Eva Peron being hidden away by nervous politicians for fear that if the working people of Argentina knew where it was buried, it would inspire them to revolution.In between Eva Peron became first the actress Eva Duarte, then the mistress of Colonel Perón, then, in October 1945 after the "shirtless ones" had swept Peron into office, the president's wife. In the colorful, tumultuous setting of postwar Argentina, she wielded a power--spiritual and practical--that has few parallels outside of hereditary monarchy. She was literally idolized by millions but was hated and feared by many as well. She became Evita, the legend.