Felipe Pigna - Style

Style

The works of Felipe Pigna are not aimed to the academic public, but to the masses. To this purpose, he employs slang, plain language, and some humor and references to the reader. He attempts to relate the historical Argentina with modern Argentina, setting parallels between past and modern events or circumstances. He considers that events do not really repeat themselves exactly because circumstances change, but the consequences are likely to be broadly the same, such as wealth gaps leading to authoritarian governments. His works usually describe history as a dispute between the people and the powerful classes, where the later ones oppressed the population both now and then, and even so people would manage to achieve some victories, even if short-lived.

Historians Tulio Halperín Dongui and Luis Alberto Romero made strong criticism Pigna's style, and refuse to consider his work as real history books even if Pigna is a professional historian. They consider that his works do not show historiographical culture, general culture or literary talent, and that the works cited in them are misquoted or taken out of context. Pigna replied that foreign works accept and acknowledge subjective views, that his aim was to make the history of Argentina easy to understand by all people, and that an opposing approach to the topic was elitist.